If your Taiwanese jointer is model CT-200 or CT204L, Byrd has a cutter head that will fit it already. I know you're set on getting a new one, but if all the castings on your CT are nice and flat with no warping, I think the $500 is well worth the upgrade. The machines that came out of Taiwan in the 80s were pretty decent with a few exceptions. And you have a Baldor on that thing!
For new stuff, you basically have two manufacturing choices when buying East Asian made machines - Taiwan and China. The general rule of thumb is to always get the Taiwanese models. For Grizzly, country of origin information is found in the specs document, which is available for every model on the Grizzly site. The one nice thing (perhaps the only nice thing) I will say about Grizzly is that they don't hide country of origin information unlike virtually every other woodworking machine manufacturer.
As far as I know, the only US manufacturer of woodworking machines left is Northfield. Some day I will own a Northfield jointer, planer or table saw. I just need to sell my first $20,000 guitar to do that....and of course build my first guitar. I'm working on it!
