3 years ago I bought a CCM 165 drum mower. It was a big improvement over the 501 sickle mower I had.
I would buy another if I had it over again. I have had no problems w/ it.
Blades are real easy to replace. The basic design of the machine makes it almost bulletproof.
That said, it is more trouble to move into transport position. Done manually.
When in transport it is quite a load. It trails to the real a good 8 ft.
I cut about 20 acres a yr and could not justify the additional cost of the disc mower. I bought it for 2k and the nearest disc was 4k. At that time I was running a 82 MF230 w/ no remotes.