Has Meade gone downhill?

[felix9000]

  After an extended absence from visual astronomy - I'm getting back into it, and I went to a local store here in Denver  where I was told Meade quality isn't that great (anymore). The dealer carried Celestron, Orion, Takahashi, and a few others, but no Meade. When I was stargazing a few years ago, Meade was tops - so I'm wondering what the actual deal is. Celestron got bought, I noticed, and is now Chinese, so I can't comment and don't know really if their quality has taken a hit, so I'm asking: what's good now? DOES Meade no longer have the quality they once did? How is Celestron after the buyout? And Explore Scientific? I don't remember them being around back in the day, and I'm looking at buying one of their truss-tube dobs that are coming out, because hey LIFETIME WARRANTY...How are they quality-wise?

[estwing]

i had a 12.5" starfinder...cracking mirror for its age

[ollypenrice]

We need, I think, to distinguish between top products and top marketing. I've never come across any evidence to suggest that Meade made or make top products. I've had two of their SCTs, including their LX200. They are OK, even quite good, but for 'top' you look elsewhere both then and now.

Olly

[John]

Explore Scientific was setup by Scott Roberts who was formerly a Meade Instruments Vice President. The company is owned by Chinese manufacturer Jinghua Optical Electronics Co. Ltd. I believe. ES equipment has made quite an impact. Here are the experiences of one of our members with the 12" version of their dobsonian:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/214494-explore-scientific-305mm-12-ultra-light-dobsonian/?hl=+explore%20+scientific%20+dobsonian

I've owned a few Meade refractors over the years and a 12" Lightbridge dobsonian plus some of their eyepieces. Some of their stuff has been good and some more mediocre, for me.

[michael8554]

Meade went downhill when they moved production to Mexico, and sold too many scopes that failed straight out of the box.

That resulted in the Chinese takeover, and I believe that they are a lot better now.

For instance, you can now get spare parts.

They were the first manufacturer to re-engineer their F10 SCT to an F8 "coma free".

Their latest scopes have a built-in guiding scope and camera that is integrated with the on-board electronics - no more anguish over PHD settings!

Olly has had LX200's, and nobody can dispute that he is qualified to judge what is good and what is top, but for balance I would refer you to the Royal Observatory Greenwich "Astronomy Photographer of the Year" books - there are some "top" images in there taken with Meade equipment.

Michael

[mikeDnight]

Meade to me represent usually average optics at best and generally poor to appalling mechanics. I've seen many engineering nightmares with the Meade logo on them. A company that can churn out as many poorly engineered mounts and scopes as I've seen from Meade, causes me to keep them at arms length, and to seriously question their ethics.

Celestron on the other hand offer generally very good to excellent products. Many top imagers choose Celestron in preference to Meade for the reasons already mentioned.

Mike

[RT65CB-SWL]

Trying to get a replacement back for my ETX105 about a light-year ago was not a pleasant one. The first guy I spoke to just didn't care. The second one was more sympathetic when I told him what had happened.

Good optics, poor mechanics and poor after-sales support.

[alan potts]

I went through a pile of beauiful handout catalogues from Meade on most of there products from about 7 years back before I binned them. A quick read through again only really made me believe  their marketing department was writting cheques that the manufacturing department couldn't honour. The same was true of the company I worked for for many years, great great marketing and a rather large custome care department.

I would not buy Meade agian though it has not broken, it just never really lived up to my expectations and after all this time I feel they are over priced, paying from the marketing maybe.

Alan

[ronin]

Meade were bought up by Sunny Optics something like 3 years ago.

Before that the Meade service etc went down hill a bit, guess that things were not going right and people were unsure of the situation.

Sunny did start to advertise spares on the website, but not sure if that is still present.

ES/JOC did want to buy Meade and the tie up looked good I think the offer was accepted, but Sunny offered more and I think under US law they were obliged to take the higher offer or get sued for accepting the lower bid on behalf of shareholders. Many thought that Meade would have been better with JOC even at the lower offer.

JOC have ES for apo and ED refractors, ES for eyepieces, Bresser for achro refractors andd the Meade goto's would have fitted in nicely if you think about it.

Now Bresser/ES offer EQ mounts that look 100% like the LXD Meade mount and I have seen Alt/Az mounts from JOC/ES that are very very close to the mount used on the LS scopes.

So not sure how much of the Meade items went to JOC but I suspect quite a bit, the assumption being they were developed jointly.

Think that the Mexico production is being moved to China now, may have moved.

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

O.K, someones got to say it. Since Meade moved their production to Mexico,production quality has gone down.However, the Sombrero Galaxy looks FANTASTIC through their scopes!           I'll get my poncho............... 

[Lowjiber]

Back in the 80's Meade primarily used Towa optics, even on their entry level scopes, and the customer service was pretty decent.  Once the Meade/Towa collusion was ended and the marketing folks took the reins, the end came rather quickly.

Scott Roberts is obsessed with customer service and left to start ES, a company whose first goal is to provide excellent customer service.  I own several ES products (scopes, mounts, eyepieces, etc.) and can attest to Scott's continuing dedication to quality service.

Today, I refuse to even consider a Meade product when purchasing anything.  When a giant falls, he usually stays down... ask David.

[Ruud]

I hope Meade recovers and becomes competitive again. 

Don't they now have the same CEO that helped Celestron back on track? I think I read that somewhere.

[Ruud]

Why is everything after post 7 in italics?

[ollypenrice]

Maybe it won't be if I type in italics to start with?

Edit. Nope, that didn't work. Maybe this will do it? 

Edit, Edit. nope, it's italics or nothing, folks!

lly

[RikM]

It all looks like normal text to me

I have used an old Meade Starfinder 8" and it was optically good but mechanically... Agricultural. The SCT telescopes have always been out of my price range so can't comment.

[Ruud]

The italics are back to normal. Maybe Olly fixed it after all.

Every bit of text, even on the buttons etcetera was in italics