Coffee Appreciation

Rich, I've just checked both baskets with my verniers and they're both 53mm straight sided. They don't seem to taper at all. I think what's more annoying is that the tamper that comes on the machine is a rather rounded 51mm which, when in the basket, seems to be about a cm too small!!
What type of tamper did you buy? Could you file it down a little, or would that pretty much ruin it?

Issue solved (sort of!).

I don't believe any of the 53mm baskets I could find online are going to fit the portafilter. So, I'm returning my 53mm tamper.

Next step is to buy a 52mm tamper (such as this one: http://www.myespresso.co.uk/product.php/151/motta-52mm-tamper/0ba5fb758c7c673b3d721bbf5c23941d )

I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Probably because I didn't know that tampers of this size were available, and I don't feel like shelling out for a custom made one. 52mm won't be an ideal fit but it's a lot better than no fit at all...

Everything else about the performance of the machine was covered by bombcup's earlier post so I'll not repeat it here.