Excalibur 3900B 9-Tray Electric Food Dehydrator

We love dehydrating our tomatoes and herbs. We've been using 2 round dehydrators with a fan for many wonderful years. One finally wore down so we "shopped around" and decided to get The Excalibur. The 9-tray model has been on our "wish list" for a long time and now was the time to get it. The manual/recipe books that come with it are easy to read and informative. Granted it's been a long time since we read a dehydrating manual but I think the dried puree/fruit roll-up type recipes listed in these guides may work for us. So much herbs and tomatoes got us to buy a second round dehydrator. No regrets but glad we were able to get The Excalibur this time. It's a bit pricey but we knew from everything we read that this was going to be THE dehydrator to have and we are not disappointed. I actually had dry tomatoes in a few short hours! Ours were sliced a little thinner than recommended since it was the first time. We also used only 3 trays spaced apart. The trays held more tomatoes than we thought. I used parchment paper carefully wrapped around the bottom mesh shelf to catch any dribbles. --Parchment IS recommended in the user guide. Very happy the company gives recommendations so you can fully use the dehydrator without buying more accessories. The special shelves would probably be easier and cost/time efficient over using parchment if you intended to use them often for roll-ups or craft work. I dried twice as much sage in one machine without any hassle other than checking for dryness. Most was dry at the same time. From 9 full sheets down to one to finish drying. When we dried the dill I noticed that the dill had been blown away a little from the fan on the center trays. Made sense since it's so light. It didn't seem to really affect the drying in any way. It was very quick. Clean up is always a chore dehydrating anything wet; it would be expected. With our round dehydrators I would spray a little oil on the racks. They were bulky and had to be scrubbed with a brush thoroughly anyway so why make it even harder? The racks from Excalibur are soooo much easier to clean. The black, hard plastic supports are light and durable. Easy to clean off. The mesh had quite a mess from the tomatoes that I would've been really down about had they been the thicker round shelves. I just put the mesh in the dishpan to soak while I washed other dishes and viola! Clean with no scrubbing :D Yeah, I'm reallllllly happy with this purchase