If you want recommendations on the "best" press on the market, I'll give you two.
1) Larry Langdon (Monster Metal/Quick and Dirty) is making some very interesting presses in Seattle, that are utilizing higher speed single stage pumps and larger motors, but less "on paper" Tonnage, that are moving metal in extremely impressive ways. They're not cheap, but he knows what he's doing and why. Afaik Dave Lisch and Mareko Maumasi got presses from him recently.
After seeing them in action, it's made me re-evaluate my build plans on a new press I'm building, where I was going to go for 35 tons with the traditional dual stage setup. The issue is, that in those conventional designs, there's a big lag when the pump switches from low to high pressure mode, right after engaging with the billet, and sucking heat quickly. Also, the IPS is usually quite slow once it flips to high pressure.
Larry's presses, while lower tonnage, appear to move metal much more efficiently than significantly larger presses with dual stage pumps, because they're approaching 2 IPS and never slowing.
This however, is likely a less forgiving design, and not a "starter" press, as they don't offer the buffer and feedback of the dual stage design.
2) If you want the best built, traditional dual stage type press in 25 or 50 tons, I'd recommend Tommy McNabb's (Carolina Custom Knives) H frame press.
It takes some getting used to, because it pushes from the bottom, as opposed to the top die moving, but these presses are much more rigid than the Riverside presses, or Claibourne presses, and have much larger format Baldor motors and paired pumps, as opposed to the random farm duty motors that really don't have enough ass to push the pumps efficiently on the other two. (FYI orsepower as we know it, doesn't translate when dealing with electric motors and their torque ratings, so two 5 horse motors can have significantly different amounts of "power" at the same rpm, which is different with fuel engines, but we use the same terminology to describe something that doesn't work the same way across platforms.)
I ran one of Tommy's presses day in day out for a week teaching a damascus class with 11 beginners, and it really held it's own.
No offense to the other two mentioned presses, I've used them both extensively also. They're great for the money (although I don't think Ron is making his currently). I've also used dozens of other home built and industrial presses up to 150 tons, and make damascus pretty much full time. The pickings are kind of slim on pre-built presses, considering the potential liability, I'm honestly surprised there are this many options, you'll have to decide which factors are priorities.
Edit: In fairness, in case it wasn't clear, I haven't used Larry's presses, but they're significant enough from the videos I've seen, that I'd highly recommend looking into them, as I know you're not a novice Russ.
