LOVE the brush meters... we ran plate planters for decades until we finally bought a 7100 Deere planter. First thing I did was swap in Kinze brush meters and Deere plateless hoppers for the old bottom-drive plate-style hoppers. The Kinze brush meters are basically 'set and forget' and the only thing to set is basically the population on the planter transmission. I could dial it in for 52,000 seed/acre on cotton, 80,000 seed/acre in sorghum, or 120,000 per acre on soybeans, and that's EXACTLY what I'd get. I did a lot of testing on the turnrows, chaining up the press wheels and inspecting to see what the seed spacing was like, and it was always dead on. Stands looked just as good as neighbors with new vacuum planters. I had the opportunity to buy a fan and meters and hoses and stuff and had considered briefly converting the 7100 to vacuum, but after seeing what the Kinze meters could do, I was REALLY glad I didn't. My BIL runs an air planter and there's WAY more to set and keep and eye on, more wear parts like seals and cutoffs, disk wear, adjusting blower speed and vacuum levels, singulators, etc... The Kinze just has the one moving part, the seed disk, and the brushes, and it does a beautiful job...
LOVE the brush meters... we ran plate planters for decades until we finally bought a 7100 Deere planter. First thing I did was swap in Kinze brush meters and Deere plateless hoppers for the old bottom-drive plate-style hoppers. The Kinze brush meters are basically 'set and forget' and the only thing to set is basically the population on the planter transmission. I could dial it in for 52,000 seed/acre on cotton, 80,000 seed/acre in sorghum, or 120,000 per acre on soybeans, and that's EXACTLY what I'd get. I did a lot of testing on the turnrows, chaining up the press wheels and inspecting to see what the seed spacing was like, and it was always dead on. Stands looked just as good as neighbors with new vacuum planters. I had the opportunity to buy a fan and meters and hoses and stuff and had considered briefly converting the 7100 to vacuum, but after seeing what the Kinze meters could do, I was REALLY glad I didn't. My BIL runs an air planter and there's WAY more to set and keep and eye on, more wear parts like seals and cutoffs, disk wear, adjusting blower speed and vacuum levels, singulators, etc... The Kinze just has the one moving part, the seed disk, and the brushes, and it does a beautiful job...