Weebles
I feel for you. I too have been around the block. Possibly your experience to date would have been better had you selected a well experienced yard as opposed to the inexperienced yard in Mexico.
What makes you think the yard is inexperienced? You've never asked, you've just assumed. If you were to walk into the yard's office this morning, you would see a large Wesmar display with a fin and stabilizer and display panel right inside the front door. Turns out that for years, many SoCal boaters have decided not to pay $130/hr yard rates.
Sunchaser, you've been oddly defensive of Wesmar in this and other posts. I simply do not agree that an installer is better suited to inform on amp/power requirements of
system design than the OEM themselves. There are system issues, and there are installation issues. I believe you have defensively assumed any fault can't be Wesmar's. Given Wesmar's recent change of ownership, it's entirely possible the Wesmar you have grown to respect no longer exists. But that's just a guess. But I'm am definitely hoping your happy experience is the norm, not my dismal experience. Time will tell.
In all due respect, I don't think you've read a bit of what I've said except to defend Wesmar. ABT and Naiad both provide an engineered 12V to 24V step-up converter. Wesmar is silent on the topic. This isn't rocket science to size properly, just need to know system power draw (Watts), so asked Wesmar. They were unable to provide. When pressed, their solution was a hand-written sketch on scratch paper describing adding two 12V batteries in series and a 120VAC/24V battery charger. That's nuts - this is a solution for a high-current draw Thruster, not a low-current draw stabilizer.
I hope to join you as a happy Wesmar customer at some point in time. But right now (and I mean
right now), in my opinion, their customer service and technical support sucks. I'll gladly call out a yard for installation issues. But for system-design and specification issues? Sorry, OEM bares responsibility. Wesmar gets low marks from me. I don't take these posts lightly, which is why I've described my experience in detail. And I tried many ways to work with Wesmar directly prior to going online with my experience. Crickets from Wesmar.
But in the end, the OP asked for reasons to chose one brand over the other. This is my experience. Do with it what you will.