Concaves?

we one time put a sunnybrook in a 9600 and it was twice the weight of the jd, found it reduced white caps a bit. Also found that the closure plates on the front two rows really help the JD concave thresh wheat.

Loewen has real good concaves for the 9600, I currently have ST. johns welding hardsurfaced concaves in two of my 9600s and they seem to well twice as long as OEM. I would say that Loewen is better than OEM using wider cross bars, making it last longer, and they are as straight as any unit can come.
St Johns is the cheapest way to go however, Im located many states away from ST Johns and found it was cheaper to pay the core charge for a concave rather than ship mine both ways, and I still saved quite a bit of money paying the core charge. Youll be surprised at how well the machine will react and also the reduction fo white caps will be significant with any new concave.
P.S. Avoid Kuchar concaves.

I would tend to stay away from the Deere as well. PF Parts has good concaves with wires going all the way to the back like they should. Whatever concave you chose, add a PF prethresher front plate for better threshing and then you don't have to run closure plates. They just choke your separating area anyway and increase walker loss.

why should the concave have wires all the way up? I remove mine after half travel in all my machines because of too much grain on the walkers. In fact The 50 and 60 series walkers came from the factory with wires only half way up. You have to let the grain loose sometime or it will end up on the walkers, Ive found even on 14 bar concaves like 9600 style removing the wires in the back made a big difference in walker loss. If the concave and bars are in good condition there should be no need for filler plates, the rasp bars are going to use all the cross bars for threshing regardless of the front being plugged or not.
In most conditions we need the concave as open as possible to allow the crop to exit through, when the rasps are in good condition they have control of the straw right from the beginning so we see no straw on the shoe.

Sorry, I should've been more clear. The wires on a PF concave go all the way up AND are spaced 2 inches apart like they should. The Deere concave wires are too close together and don't allow enough grain through the front half of the concave. So it basically restricts the majority of separation to the rear of the concave and the beater grate. This increases the chance of grain getting pulled onto the walkers. You can pull wires on the deere to get the 2" gaps but the problem is in corn. You don't need those annoying cast fillers in the rear of the concave to prevent whole cobs from coming through the concave.

Put a Deere concave in.

In other words deere manager is saying spend more money than necessary.
Im wondering if anyone has had problems with straw on the shoe by pulling every other wire out of the stock concave. Ive thought of it many times but never wanted to try it without knowing the exact effects.
We have ultra dry conditions by early June in wheat, and plenty of straw to help things thresh, im guessing having those 2" gaps would be a good idea compared to 1".

Put a Loewen in it, thats what I did, and I'm very happy with it. Oh yea it was allot cheaper than the one with green paint on it too.

I second that,, keep in mind that i hear Loewan was bought out by A&I, according to my loewen distributor, and getting parts shipped fast is kind of hard, Ive been waiting two weeks for two sets of bars, in the past they were delivered in days, so maybe some company transition glitches in effect, in other words, make a decision and get them ordered or youll be waiting for a bit,if they have the concaves made up already.