I've got a lot of experience running all sorts of lathes. In my humble opinion, the Grizzly is low quality Chinese junk. Yeah, it's extremely versatile Chinese junk, and it will get the job done, but for the same money you could buy a nice old lathe that's built like a Roles Royce.
For myself, I invested in an old LeBlonde Regal 17" swing with 8 foot ways. It's a wonderful machine and I run my gunsmithing business on it. Occasionally I get in trouble with metric threads, but other than that, I'd put it up against the highest end lathes on the market today, and the Grizzly stuff looks like a high point next to an old Wilson 1911.
I gave $3500 for it installed and that's a HELL of a lot of lathe.
If you were to go looking at a nice YAM, Atlas, Clausing, Turnmaster, Southbend, etc I think you could get the lathe, and a boat load of tooling for less than the base machine from Grizzly.
Look at this one on ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Metal-lathe-At ... itleDesc=0
If you buy something like that, sure it aint very pretty, but it doesn't have to be, because if you can't run a paintbrush, you've got no business running a lathe.
On a lathe, the main thing you have to have to do good work is excellent spindle bearings (and they rarely go out). Just chuck a piece of stock and take a light cleanup cut with a sharp tool on a slow feed and high speed.
Place an indicator on the fresh machined surface and see if it runs true to less than .0002. If it does, you're golden.
Next, cut threads on that surface, then make a nut to go over those threads. If they fit tight and screw together smoothly, you have a good halfnut. If they feel like garbage, check your lead screw and half nut. Replace if necessary.
Past that, you need a good live center which is easily replaced if its bad, and sharp tooling, which will be a constant effort anyway.
The point is, you'll want to run these same tests on the new Grizzly if you decide to go that way, but if the Grizzly fails, it's because of cheap junk components, and you'll be replacing them with cheap junk components when they break, whereas the old machine parts will be replaced with new old stock from a time when a machine tool was a much more serious thing and all parts are overbuilt and carefully crafted by or for Americans to make a living with.
It's just a much better situation of quality with the old stuff in my opinion.