Meade Announcement

We all laughed when celestron was bought by Tasco, comparisons like "Toyota been bought out by a company who made skate boards" were plastered all over the web.
Well, how the tide has turned, celestron must be laughing, the only thing is that they will probabily have to follow Meade to the far east in order to compete. I'd be seriously worried about quality control, I wouldn't fancy a scope made by Frank Spencer (Remember "some mothers do 'an 'em") :lol: :lol: if you know what I mean...

I always get nervy when I see companies buying others like Meade did to Coronado, they invariably end up destroying them.

The mad max mount is gone, not surprising!, but ALL the RCX range is also GONE!! this is amazing, they must have had a seriously high number of returns !!
wow, am I glad I held onto my auld reliable LX200 classic !. still grinding away after nearly 9 years.

With the low labour costs in the Far East I'm sure it won't be long before 99% of all astronomical telescopes will be manufactured there, the other 1% being high priced individuals such as AP.

We can all dream of a European manufacturer, but let's be honest, it's not going to happen, unless it's in the 1% bracket.

We're just going to have to get used to seeing "Made in China" stamped on our scopes.

With the low labour costs in the Far East I'm sure it won't be long before 99% of all astronomical telescopes will be manufactured there, the other 1% being high priced individuals such as AP.

You get what you pay for. I've yet to hear of a disatisfied AP customer.

Personally, I have found that if you buy cheap, you buy twice. You're better off biting your tongue and paying top prices for quality astro items (at least the core items) than ending up selling things on a while later or worse, binning them. If you get quality gear you will either liklely keep it or sell it at a price close to what you paid. Win-win.

I'd be surprised if we get 99% of telescopes made in the Far East and I suppose its wrong to think that quality *will* go down. Perhaps we'd be surprised and find the quality of the mass-market scopes improves. After all, with cheaper manufacturing prices perhaps there will be more investment in R&D and quality...

Here's hoping this is a good move.

Given that most of the problems with the RCX400 have been caused by the assembly line, I just hope they don't use the same Chinese production line that the lidl LXD75 scopes came off of.

I agree with you Dave about cost, you really cant do serious astronomy on the cheap, if you do you will pay more in the long run.

All of the Coronado Calcium-K scopes are discontinued as well. Pity
The 14" LX200R OTA, all the RCX 400 scopes and the MAX mount are also discontinued.

Interesting. I was wondering if this would happen after all the problems they've had over the past couple of years. They were over $20 million in the red last year - alot of which apparently had to do with the RCX development.

It's looking like they are going to go back to their base and away from the ultra-premium scopes & keep their costs down like Celestron have been doing since being taken over by Synta.

I'm glad to see that the Coronado h-alpha stuff is continuing. I was worried that this would be one area they would scrap.
Always found it strange that they would offer a Calcium K PST though considering that so many people simply cannot see anything in that wavelength.

I hope it works out for them. They have a plethora of fantastic products & when I think about it nearly all of the scopes made by their main competitors (Celestron, SkyWatcher, Orion) are now made in China, so it is possible to obtain decent quality from the far east. They've even started manufacturing their smaller SCTs there, e.g. the C6 SCTs are all made in China.