At work, we bought a Grizzly G4000 and I was impressed with the quality for the cost. I had also had good customer service response from Grizzly. The G602 was a step up in size and would meet most of my needs at a reasonable cost.
One of the first things that I did on the G4000 was to beef up the compound clamp. When I got my G602, it was also high on my list. My current clamp is a 6 bolt design with 3 additional bolts on the dial plate as well. This provides a very rigid clamping system. Other mods that I made were adding a reverse tumbler, a spindle work stop, a carriage stop, and 3 axis DRO. With these mods, I am quite happy with the lathe.
The one exception is the belt drive system. For high speed operation the, the motor drives the spindle directly via a 3L belt. For low speed operation, the motor drives a gear belt to an intermediate pulley and from there through 3L belt to the spindle. From a drive torque perspective, this is bass ackwards! The result is that there is a lack of available drive torque when doing heavy turning at low speed. Unfortunately, I don't see a solution other than a complete redo of the drive train.
The 10" swing is actually 9-3/4", as I found out recently. I also ran into the torque limitation cutting a 7" diameter in what was essentially a trepanning operation. Heavier feeds would result in frequent stalls so a light feed had to be used.
Still the G9972 is a good little lathe, can't really complain.
