Celestron 127mak tripod upgrade help

[Andrew stuart]

Evening all, I want to get a sturdier tripod for my 127 SLT. Can anyone offer recommendations that will let me just drop the Goto mount onto please. Thanks. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

No such tripod exists. You will have to make an adaptor. If you search around you may be able to find a suitable design.

I bought a spare 'bowl head' from astroboot and made wooden legs for it. (It was rather laborious.)

[banjaxed]

18 hours ago, Andrew stuart said:

Evening all, I want to get a sturdier tripod for my 127 SLT. Can anyone offer recommendations that will let me just drop the Goto mount onto please. Thanks. 

I don’t have the Celestron Mak but I used to have the Skywatcher model. If you bought the Skywatcher 3/8” stainless steel tripod you will find it a lot more stable. If your attaching screw is 1/4” you could get an adapter to make it fit.

[Andrew stuart]

Thanks for the replies. Ref the Skywatcher tripod, yes I had heard it was a good bet. So on the hunt. Cheers. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

The Sky-watcher 3.8" tripod (listed by FLO) will not do what you asked for in your original post, but it looks like it might be easy to make an adaptor plate for a SLT mount head if you have metalworking tools.

[Paul M]

The 127Mak is a great little scope. I like mine but the failings with the SLT are, in my opinion, in the mount not the tripod. 

It's a scope very much worth an upgrade but that includes the mount! My recommendation would be good second hand NEQ5 but I guess that isn't what you were hoping to hear. Sorry!

[Cosmic Geoff]

4 minutes ago, Paul M said:

My recommendation would be good second hand NEQ5

That would be good if you need a heavy mount for something else but overkill for a Mak that weighs about 4Kg. 

Most of the wobble in a SLT mount is down to the tripod so upgrading that rather than the whole GoTo mount is a sensible upgrade.