I used the hand grinder at the finest setting. Waiting on my local coffee roaster to deliver the pregrounded one. I need to do a comparison to understand the difference.
I know the GCP has its flaws, but I like mine a lot. Definitely get a backflush basket and some cafiza to clean it regularly. And then also look into the OPV 9 bar mod from Shades of Coffee if you want to tinker a bit. Sounds intimidating, but it's just a replacement spring for the over pressure valve. I enjoy the resulting espresso more after I made the mod.
Yes. I plan on doing the 9 Bar mod. I was hoping the EVO version would have it by default. Looks like only North America version has 9 Bar by default.
There was another link shared by a user for a mod: https://gaggiuino.github.io/
Did you check if it has the flaking issue? I bought one a week ago and it already has flakes through the steam wand. Seems like Gaggia is ignorant of the issue.