Direct. One of the nice things is with no state presence, no sales tax!
GOOGLE is your friend. Don't always expect a forum to have the last word.
Harvey is dedicated to high quality machines in not only woodworking but other fields too. Check out our T40 Wood Lathe and our Gyro Air Dust Collector!
www.harveywoodworking.com
Woodcraft also sells Laguna. Heck, Amazon , Home Depot, Lowe's and I assume Manard's sells a lot of tools, so search! It was Woodcraft where I was able to look at a Laguna, Rikon, and Jet band saw side buy side. Darn tough decision as all three are very good machines. No one's support is perfect, so I considered that a wash. But the $1400 Harvey is about the same spec as the $2000 Laguna and Rikon. The Ambassador line is their less expensive one. When you move to their top Alpha line, they are closer in price to the big names. For example, looking at their top line table saw vs Powermatic, it is only a couple hundred different.
They are not real quick right now on messages due to the virus problem. I think there are only a handful of folks at most in the US. Before things got bad, they were quick.
Over on LJ, there was a lot of info on who they are. They have been doing OEM for SawStop, Grizzly and others for quite a while. They are a real company. They also own BridgeCity tools. On the WEB they have big pictures of a factory, though it sure looks like come CGI involved. So who knows how they actually build things. For me, it is the result that matters.
If anyone is wondering, I have no associations with anyone, just do as much research as I can being basically a cheap old guy who is very picky about tools. Seriously, picking a band saw was hard as we have a choice of good machines. I only dismissed the Grizzly for what I consider sloppy old style guides I don't like much. But overall, they too are a good machine and you will find many happy owners. A few people complain about Laguna guides holding their set, not you can't pry one out of their hands. A few have complained about guide bearing failures on Rikon, but again, no one is dumping one.
Back to the table saw, the F3 really impressed me except for the front table distance. The new "euro" fence solves some problems, but creates others. I use several jigs that ride my fence I would have to re-make to ride the slot. I did not look really deep into the 1 3/4 class hybrid machines as my Ridgid contractor actually does it's job very well and a new saw just to get a riving knife is a lot of money unless I can justify something else. Going to a 3 HO cabinet saw that weighs 200 Lbs more gives advantages in smoothness and ease of ripping full 3 inch hardwood. So a F1 or F2 is just not really an upgrade for me. F3 is. So is Powermatic 2000 or maybe the Harvey. There is a Grizzly in the running, but kind of scared. Seems if you get a good one, you love it, but it is hit or miss on a good one. Realize, we hear about every bad one, but only a few good ones. Only Delta (Shame, the new Unisaw looks really nice) can I find almost no positive comments on. If they were hit or miss, I would have bought their drill press instead of a 25 year old one. Hindsight, maybe I should have bought a Plamgren. If I won the lottery, I would buy a Nova.
Maybe it was just the one store. More than one salesman at the local Woodcraft played down the F3 reliability and availability. I called Laguna and they said heck, they had 100 of them in the SC warehouse. I have seen no negatives on the forums. ( I dismiss various shipping issues as that can happen to anyone and has nothing to do with the machine quality) My conclusion is the profit margin on SawStop is higher so they really only want to sell them. Good saws if you can afford them. I can't. If I was a commercial shop or contractor where anyone other than myself touched the saw, it would be a SS. If I was an insurance underwriter, I would demand a SS. They did have an F1 ( I think, maybe F2) at the triangle store.
Too verbose? Well we are talking about a lot of money.