Which mount to upgrade to for astrophotography?

[chouet]

Hi all

I’ve been using an NEQ6 for about 8 years in my obsy (belt modded earlier this year) for astrophotography and am starting to get the urge to upgrade the mount, mainly to maximise precious imaging time and reduce glitches. Most of my imaging is at 250-770mm focal length with refractors and occasionally a 2350mm SCT. I’m guiding most of the time, but unguided is interesting to be able to image with both scopes at the same time (maybe). 
 

I’m interested to hear recommendations in order to get a sense of performance (gains) vs cost. I’d rather not spend a few thousand now if I’d be better of waiting and making a bigger investment later to get a meaningful gain over the NEQ6. 
 

Thanks!

Nick

[scitmon]

What kind of glitches are you getting?  I would have thought that a belt modded NEQ6 would be a very competent mount.

Edited July 15, 2020 by scitmon

[pete_l]

The NEQ6 is in the "20kg" class. You will find that to take the next step up, in either quality or load capacity is where it becomes expensive.
There are outfits around that will hypertune the mount for you, which might be all it needs after 8 years: degrease, clean, regrease with better lubricants, adjust the worm spacing and possibly upgrade some bearings.

[chouet]

Thanks for the replies. The question is not really about whether to save the NEQ6, I'd like to understand what I'd gain over the NEQ6 with other / higher quality options - though it would be interesting to know how a hyper tuned NEQ6 would compare to a standard one or say, a £2000/£4000/£6000 mount.