Well aparently according to Grizley's chat line, they don't make it any more. They are out of stock on all jointers I can afford. I guess they decided for me. Crazy!
Grizzly is generally where you turn when you want something of reasonable quality at a much lower than typical price, but not necessarily where you turn for instant gratification. All their heavy equipment is manufactured in Taiwan in batches several times a year, but the boat trip here can take a month or two. Couple that with the typical rule that if you want low prices then you can not assume the overhead of a deep inventory and you wind up with periods where many items or parts may be back ordered for months at a time. But if you are certain you want a specific Grizzly model and you can wait a few months then you may wish to place yourself on the list for a new one so you will be at the front if the be when they do come in, it just means you will need to wait a few months before gratification.
One point I will bring up about the Grizzly, and some other vendor's, jointer models is to ensure that the elevated power switch tower is compatible with your shop layout as it can get in the way of material handling if your jointer is located anywhere near a tablesaw, which will depend a lot on your shop's layout. Such certainly would not work in my shop where the jointer, tablesaw and bandsaw make up a center work island in my shop. When I lay the jointer fence at 45-degree angle my jointer is completely below the level of my tablesaw allowing sheet goods to be processed at the tablesaw. Not something that will affect everyone, but sonething to be aware of when laying out a shop.
One thing I will suggest, though, is to be careful about directly comparing products from vendors like Jet and Powermatic with those of Grizzly on price alone. Grizzly generally makes decent equipment (they do have a few lemons, but who doesn't) but the fit and finish and degree of finish machining and initial quality control on economy tools is where a good portion of the savings comes from. As such, they are not wholly comparable even though both may be jointers with seemingly similar specs on paper. There are also differences in depth of inventory maintained, as you discovered.
That said, if you need an 8" jointer now, do not feel like you need to be exclusively beholden to a helical/spiral cutterhead unless you work extensively with highly figured woods where such cutterheads do offer significantly improved performance over straight knives. Straight knives do quite well on all but the most wildly figured woods if kept sharp and are not as hard to setup and maintain as some may make it sound (especially if you purchase a jointer with a Quickset cutterhead), though it is handy to keep a spare set of sharp blades on hand for when you need them while you get your knives sharpened. If later on you wish to upgrade to a spiral or helical cutterhead, it is a pretty trivial operation, typically just two bolts securing the pillow blocks, to swap out the cutterhead on many jointer models and often the finished cost comes out about the same overall when you figure in the elevated purchase price of a model that comes shipped with a helical/spiral cutterhead. I am very happy, for example, with my 8" Jet jointer and have used it for quite a few years and still use my original straight knives (sharpened several times, obviously). If I were to take the plunge on a helical/spiral cutterhead I would likely look for such in a thickness planer before I did the jointer any how, as such is a more effective place, IMHO, to invest that money to begin with since most of your stock removal is with the planer and it is the planer's finished faces that are what is seen after surfacing operations are completed.
Just a few thoughts that may, or may not, help in your search. I wish you all the best in finding a jointer that will meet your needs.
