Hi I have the skywatcher 12 inch goto. I am not aware of any excess noise from motor gears etc when I push the scope round manually. if you have already solved the problem then great. Otherwise I will get my scope out and try and film the manual goto action. Not sure whether that will help. I am very pleased with the fact that I can manually goto an object and then when in close proximity I can send the scope on goto to centre the object. This prevents noise disturbing neighbours because the auto goto is of short duration and usually slow speed. The noise of the goto is not that loud but I am always conscious of being as quiet as possible in the middle of the night.