Yes, there are other brands available in the US. I for one, just refuse to pay $1200 for a small Marathon 4-pole head.
Respectfully, Jim
Indeed, the Marathon heads are expensive. However, the volume is low on small, 4-pole heads, and costs are through the roof. I build tube audio equipment as a hobby, and my transformer winder tells me that he's had 7 price increases on laminations in the past year and copper prices are insane. His costs have steadily been going up and up for several years already.
I worked for a time recently at a motor manufacturer who made stepper, servo, and old tech PM DC motors. I can easily see where manufacturing cost for a 5kW Marathon generator head would be $600 by the time materials, USA wages, and overhead were applied. As a single unit purchaser through a distributor, you could easily get to $1200 sell price. If you could buy 50 or 100 at a time, factory direct, prices would undoubtedly be a lot lower. I'm sure Marathon has to buy minimum lot sizes of components for these small 4 pole heads, and sits on inventory for a long time. Small lot sizes of machinings, castings, or molded parts gets you a big percentage of setup costs, etc. built into the piece price.
Chris
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