Corn planter AC vs John deer

IIRC, a 7000 should have gauge wheels, while I don't think the 333 did. I thought the 7000 was supposed to do better with depth control, but I can't say for certain. I'd think that the age and size would be comparable.

I need 1 just for 30 acres we are doing organic beans
Have to be no till and I have to plant through a bed of rye grass layed over, not tilled under.
So if the 333 is heavy that should work good.

I use a 7000 conservation, but there is a old 8-30 planter in the weeds ive been thinking of dragging out to plant beans with

Have a 7000 and do not like it. It has the finger pick up. Every season it goes to the Deere dealer to get recalibrated. We still get doubles and skips. I ran an Allis air champ for seven years and that was great. no skips or doubles and plant the right population.

Edited by DennisA (IL) - 05 Oct 2015 at 10:03pm

What about a white planter? Easy to find parts for, you don't have to take the meters in yearly for calibration.

plus the jd planter has a zillion bearings

Klausp wrote: I have a hard time paying 5k+ for a JD7000 when I can get a AC 333 for $1500 in my area Specially if they are that close in how they preform.

You get what you pay for.

We have relatives who ran a White planter. They absolutely loved it!

With the finger pickups properly adjusted and tested, my 7000 didn't skip. It did drop an extra seed every 15 feet that made me run out of seed. It didn't need serious modifications to work well no till. I used AC plow coulters to cut the stover and Dawn trash whippers to clear the stover from the planter path.

The Cyclo 400 was good at counting but horrible at bunching and skipping. On the average the seed spacing was OK, but by the foot it often dropped three then skipped a foot on corn. Once on beans a pipe plugged and I planted 5 rows instead of 6 which made it hard to go replant. One other time the fan drive belt wore down and it planted the first 50 feet of the bean field and then dropped no more beans. I didn't have a working monitor for it. They called it a planter, I called it a pile of .... and more than once I wanted to make it the center of a bonne fire but it wouldn't have contributed enough combustible material to the fire.

Gerald J.

I have an Oliver disk, a bigger JD disk, a Case-IH field cultivator, an IH sickle mower, a Case plow, an Allis 2000 plow, a Heston mower/conditioner. a JD 7000 planter, a Cyclo 400 as is, another converted to a liquid side dresser, a JD flail mower, a JD rotary hoe, a JD row cultivator, a JD 4020 with MF 236 loader, a MF-135, a long 1099 three point back hoe, a sprayer I built, a JD 112 garden tractor and an EWJ garden tractor with a modified 1 bottom horse plow. I used to have a Ford 8N, an IH hay rake, a MF-12 baler, and an odd brand wheel type hay rake.

I have two snappers and the JD 112 plus a Lawn Boy and a Black and Decker for lawn mowing. Not all are working right now.

Gerald J.

Gerald J. wrote: With the finger pickups properly adjusted and tested, my 7000 didn't skip. It did drop an extra seed every 15 feet that made me run out of seed. It didn't need serious modifications to work well no till. I used AC plow coulters to cut the stover and Dawn trash whippers to clear the stover from the planter path. The Cyclo 400 was good at counting but horrible at bunching and skipping. On the average the seed spacing was OK, but by the foot it often dropped three then skipped a foot on corn. Once on beans a pipe plugged and I planted 5 rows instead of 6 which made it hard to go replant. One other time the fan drive belt wore down and it planted the first 50 feet of the bean field and then dropped no more beans. I didn't have a working monitor for it. They called it a planter, I called it a pile of .... and more than once I wanted to make it the center of a bonne fire but it wouldn't have contributed enough combustible material to the fire. Gerald J.

Where do you have your planter calibrated?

I had my finger units calibrated at a Deere dealer. They have a test stand for that.

The so called no till 7000 with the wide waffle coulters is not very good unless the ground is dry and dusty. Otherwise those coulters plug up with mud and make a packing wheel in the worst place, the row. I used a plow coulter to cut stover and to make a slot for 32% when planting corn. I can post pictures if desired. Have to dig for them but I have them on a server already but not as a web page. I used coulters borrowed from my AC plow and Dawn trash whippers to separate the sliced stover and it notilled perfectly except for the extra dropped seed.

The finger units do wear. The fingers wear, their mountings and springs wear, and the back plate with its nubbin to release the seed wears along with a little brush. There are Deere parts, Shoup parts, and Precision Planting parts. The belt that lowers the seed from the finger unit also wears and it along with the seed tube that gets worn by the ground and the opening disks wear.

Then other wear points in the 7000 are the gauge wheel pivots. There are parts from Deere, Shoup, and most say the best ones from RK Products that are most easily adjusted and wear the best. Also the pivots for the closing wheel tail piece wear and those same sources have parts with RK considered to be better.

Gerald J.

If you have to no till and you go with the Deere,be sure it has the heavy duty down pressure springs, and the slower you plant the better job of will do, but I suppose that is true of any planter. I'm 38 years old and cannot remember anyone around here ever using an Allis planter. Around here you either ran a Deere or a Deere...few guys had those IH suck blow things but they were considered wierdos. We had a 1290a and a 7000 they were both good planters....finger pick up always worked well for us if you maintained them. We now have a Kinze and I wouldn't ever own anything else again

Lots of Kinze planter parts interchange with JD 7000 parts. Kinze built planters for Deere at one time, then went to building planter bars to make bigger planters with Deere row units buying them from Deere, but Deere quite supplying the row units, so Kinze built them again for their own sales. Deere sued and lost. I'm sure they write their subcontractor contracts more in their favor now.

The Kinze bean brush units are no comparison to the Deere bean cups. The Kinze bean units count precisely and space evenly. The Deere bean cups are badly controlled spills. OK with $12 a sack bean seed, but not good for $50 a sack seed.

Its important to have the finger meters adjusted with the seed you will be planting. The adjustments are critical to size and weight of the seed.

Gerald J.

best thing that Deere ever copied was a wagon gear!