Brand loyalty

[Emperor!Takahashi!]

On 15/07/2024 at 09:54, John said:

I have owned an excellent Takahashi for 7 years now. 

I could have bought, and could still buy, more Tak's but personally I am enjoying owning and using other good brands of telescopes  as well - "variety is the spice of life" 🙂

 

 

 😉😇🙃

Edited July 17 by Emperor!Takahashi!

[JeremyS]

18 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Same here!

Although not my job I use to work with marketers and can well remember going to a conference about marketing and technology. It was around 2007/2008 and there was all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas about marketing new or possible near future tech. Out of interest I was taken by how young most of the marketers were. In comparison I was old.

At one point I held up my then very new first generation iPhone and suggested that maybe take a look at this, as to me this was the future of mobile. This brought smiles with replies along the lines of… “it’ll never catch on”, “it’s a toy”, “Apple will only ever capture a tiny amount of the mobile market”, “you need to look towards Nokia & BlackBerry”, “there’s no money in Apple”. All so wrong! Now, whatever you think of Apple they do some great marketing, but it was all very much “follow the money” and then Apple were the small guys. 

And for some reason this reminds me of pilchards and how rebranding pilchards to Cornish sardines massively helped to increase sales. Pilchards did, for some reason, have an image problem. Eg when I was younger a friend would only feed them to her cat. Although maybe it was the cat who had more taste!

As a toddler, I told the old lady living next door that my mum had given me cat food for lunch. Fortunately she didn’t call social services, but instead asked my mum what was going on. Sure enough my mum explained that I had been given John West tinned pilchards. Which our cat also used to enjoy.

[russ]

I use to have zero brand loyalty, whatever was best value and still did the job. However, I seem to have built up an eyepiece collection that is entirely Televue. And I love them. So I guess a bit of brand loyalty creeping in. 

[PeterStudz]

For astronomy I don’t think that I have any brand loyalty. Although most of my gear is SkyWatcher and I’ve only been back in the hobby for a few years. Before that the only telescope I had was back in the 1970’s as a boy. However, I like my OTA to be black and white. So, if there are two with similar specs and one is black and white, the other some other colour, I’ll go for the one that’s black/white😀. 

I’m not sure why I like this colour combination. It could be that my childhood telescope was black/white and this brings back happy memories. Although it was a bit rubbish, certainly by today’s standards, I loved that telescope!

 

[Elp]

2 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Which our cat also used to enjoy.

Is this how it started for you, got a dose of the Catahashi?

[globular]

If I give my cat pilchards the corrector plate gets smears on it.

[JeremyS]

1 hour ago, PeterStudz said:

I’m not sure why I like this colour combination. It could be that my childhood telescope was black/white and this brings back happy memories. 

Everything in my childhood was black and white

[PeterStudz]

22 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Everything in my childhood was black and white

I can remember when I was told that our TV was black and white. Initially I did not believe them. For me I was seeing colours 😀

[MalcolmP]

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

 in my childhood was black and white

My yoof wasnt even b&w, ! Only wireless

BBCtv arrived in our street somewhat later, in nick of time for the coronation.

Back on topic : I am still brand loyal to the beeb; adverts came along much later (on a thing called ITV) and they still to this day irritate me so much that I have to mute the box or "do stay with us " is the cue to flip channels.

Edited July 15 by MalcolmP

[Travelman]

This is my first post on SGL - but not the last🙂

 

Being the happy owner of the following Takahashi scopes and mounts, I guess I have to confess that I suffering from Takahashititis.....

FC-50

FS-60Q

TG-SP SKY Patrol 2 Mount

TM-SP Mount

 

 

To my defense, I also have a Celestron C5+ & C6 Tube, a ZWO Seestar S50, Edmund Astroscan and a 70 mm Mak of which I will not even mention the brand

 

 

Clear skies to all

 

Torben

Copenhagen

 

[Sunshine]

Phew! For a minute there I thought this was morphing into another Takahashi post. Brand loyalty demonstrates itself in everything we buy, from cars to telescopes. It is usually born of experience through years of owning a particular brand, when it comes to solar scopes I would not think of anything other than a Lunt (my 60mm). When it comes to dobsonians I am not so picky, my celestron 8” starsense does the job nicely but mention refractors and thats where I become a little more demanding. My brand loyalty regarding refractors was all over the place when I first discovered refractors some seven uears ago but after running into and buying a TSA-102 I was pretty much hooked, infected, corrupted to the Takahashi name. My current refractor is an FS128 and it is a wonderful instrument, if I were to buy another refractor it would be difficult to stray from the brand.

[Ratlet]

On 15/07/2024 at 11:30, PeterStudz said:

For astronomy I don’t think that I have any brand loyalty. Although most of my gear is SkyWatcher and I’ve only been back in the hobby for a few years. Before that the only telescope I had was back in the 1970’s as a boy. However, I like my OTA to be black and white. So, if there are two with similar specs and one is black and white, the other some other colour, I’ll go for the one that’s black/white😀. 

I’m not sure why I like this colour combination. It could be that my childhood telescope was black/white and this brings back happy memories. Although it was a bit rubbish, certainly by today’s standards, I loved that telescope!

 

I get the black and white thing although coming from the other side, for some reason I just don't like the colour scheme of Takahashi.  There's something about the green on the focuser/clamps that just doesn't fit.  Flip side, I really like the shade of orange on old celestrons which I think was a tiny bit darker (might be just old paint).

I do like the cream colour on the taks though.  Looks very clean and clinical.  Has a bit of 90s anime sci-fi shade for me.

I do like it when a brand are consistent.  I like svbony stuff, but some is great, some is absolute garbage.  StellaMira/StellaLyra I can be pretty certain is going to tick all my boxes.

Actually do FLO count as a brand?  Really the only time I buy astronomy stuff from other places is when they don't carry it.  I like that you can buy things from them and you just know there won't be a problem.  Heck I bought a Morpheus from them about a week before they had a sale and they refunded me the difference!

Marvelous company.

[PeterStudz]

16 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

 

Actually do FLO count as a brand?  Really the only time I buy astronomy stuff from other places is when they don't carry it.  I like that you can buy things from them and you just know there won't be a problem.  Heck I bought a Morpheus from them about a week before they had a sale and they refunded me the difference!

Marvelous company.

And they don’t stock rubbish. As we all know there’s far too much astronomy rubbish out there. And as a beginner, when everything is especially confusing, it’s good to know that if you buy from FLO you won’t get rubbish. Mind, that doesn’t stop you purchasing the wrong thing. 

Although despite the advice I’m not surprised that so many beginners still just buy from Amazon. I know some people who only buy online from Amazon. I also know some who are “returners” - they’ll simultaneously buy a selection of similar things and use Amazon’s generous returns policy in order to send back what they don't like, hopefully keeping the one that they do. I really can’t get my head around that! But it creates a form of loyalty in those that do it.

[Mr Spock]

1 hour ago, Ratlet said:

for some reason I just don't like the colour scheme of Takahashi.  There's something about the green on the focuser/clamps that just doesn't fit.

A very expensive fix which also gets rid of that dire focuser throwback to the '60s.

[Emperor!Takahashi!]

3 hours ago, Ratlet said:

I get the black and white thing although coming from the other side, for some reason I just don't like the colour scheme of Takahashi.  There's something about the green on the focuser/clamps that just doesn't fit.  Flip side, I really like the shade of orange on old celestrons which I think was a tiny bit darker (might be just old paint).

I do like the cream colour on the taks though.  Looks very clean and clinical.  Has a bit of 90s anime sci-fi shade for me.

I do like it when a brand are consistent.  I like svbony stuff, but some is great, some is absolute garbage.  StellaMira/StellaLyra I can be pretty certain is going to tick all my boxes.

Actually do FLO count as a brand?  Really the only time I buy astronomy stuff from other places is when they don't carry it.  I like that you can buy things from them and you just know there won't be a problem.  Heck I bought a Morpheus from them about a week before they had a sale and they refunded me the difference!

Marvelous company.

This is a departure from the topic, but I really appreciate FLO, too. Especially coming from the US, where I didn't encounter any retailer that is so customer-focused. I bought something from basically every astronomy supplier there, and the spectrum of treatment spans from indifference to thinly veiled disdain, especially if you are a visual observer and aren't interested in the imaging gadgets that seem to be their most profitable items.

If I wanted another telescope of Japanese origin, superb optical quality, with a color scheme that I can gaze at endlessly, and that doesn't rhyme with "Shmixen" ( 😇), I'd buy it through FLO.

Edited July 17 by Emperor!Takahashi!

[Emperor!Takahashi!]

9 hours ago, Travelman said:

This is my first post on SGL - but not the last🙂

 

Being the happy owner of the following Takahashi scopes and mounts, I guess I have to confess that I suffering from Takahashititis.....

FC-50

FS-60Q

TG-SP SKY Patrol 2 Mount

TM-SP Mount

 

 

To my defense, I also have a Celestron C5+ & C6 Tube, a ZWO Seestar S50, Edmund Astroscan and a 70 mm Mak of which I will not even mention the brand

 

 

Clear skies to all

 

Torben

Copenhagen

 

I also keep a few Celestron and Meade items around so that I can mingle with the commoners.

 

 

(This ☝️ is meant as a joke.)

 

 

And welcome to SGL!

Edited July 17 by Emperor!Takahashi!

[Travelman]

1 hour ago, Emperor!Takahashi! said:

I also keep a few Celestron and Meade items around so that I can mingle with the commoners.

 

 

(This ☝️ is meant as a joke.)

 

 

And welcome to SGL!

🤣😂🤣😂

[JeremyS]

9 hours ago, Ratlet said:

for some reason I just don't like the colour scheme of Takahashi.  There's something about the green on the focuser/clamps that just doesn't fit.  

Well in that case, the good news is Tak changed from the hospital green livery to baby blue several years ago 😊

Edited July 17 by JeremyS

[John]

My Tak focuser and finder mount is black - 1st run FC100-DL.

I wish the tube clamp was black as well but for some reason they stuck with hospital green 🙄

I guess I could always loose the clamp and put rings and a DT bar on instead. The clamp does work very well though.

Edited July 17 by John

[Bivanus]

Well, brand loyalty is a tricky thing. I had for a while a TS APO and an SW APO...Then the SW went bye bye ( it was the 72mm) and another TS APO in 80mm joined in. Did I buy it because it was TS or because it suited what I wonted to do ? Sad truth: I bought it because that was what I could afford 😅 Similarly in the AZ mounts - I wanted a Rowan AZ75 but...TS AZT6 does the job in my budget...Of course , one could argue that I also put quite a lot of money in TV eyepieces , but again, it's the best glass I have the means to get  ( and I also go strong on APM latelly ) 

[John]

I have one of those TS AZT6 mounts. I didn't realise that they could take such a load.

 

[Bivanus]

@Johnthe trick is equilibrium. I use the extender rod from my EQ-6 mount and another extender rod I bought separately-the M12 thread fits directly , just take care and don't over-tighten , it will block the movement.The end screws were manufactured by lathe , they are bigger than the original ( wider end) so I can easily unscrew them at night. The weights are a mixed bunch , the big one is also from the EQ-6 the small one is from Bresser.

[CraigT82]

1 hour ago, Bivanus said:

@Johnthe trick is equilibrium. I use the extender rod from my EQ-6 mount and another extender rod I bought separately-the M12 thread fits directly , just take care and don't over-tighten , it will block the movement.The end screws were manufactured by lathe , they are bigger than the original ( wider end) so I can easily unscrew them at night. The weights are a mixed bunch , the big one is also from the EQ-6 the small one is from Bresser.

I see you also have the bigger frac mounted and n an unusual way on an L bracket held on the saddle, what's the reasoning behind that? 

[Bivanus]

@CraigT82it's a personal preference really.On one hand it gives me the peace of mind that when I tinker at the scope and have to unclamp it's on a flat surface and would not easily fall, on the other hand it lets me use the finder/guider on-top the OTA , something that I preffer to the sideway mount.Also , for the bigger scopes ( 102mm and also used a couple times with a 110mm ) it seems to me you can get a better equilibrium by being able to move it a bit on the Left-Right not only Front-Back.Another thing is that from time to time I also use binoculars and that L-Bracket is excelent for this aplication ( I thing that's what TS sells it for in the first place)

EDIT: The L-Bracket can also go Higher-Lower , if you put a lot of stuff on the scope ythe ensamble can get a little top=heavy , by lowering it a bit you can find a better equilbrium for the whole shebag 😄 On the 80mm I find it necesary to use a counterweight when using the binoviewer , otherwise it works like a charm without it.

Edited Monday at 09:16 by Bivanus

[RT65CB-SWL]

Here’s my brand loyalty to amateur astronomy and non-astronomy 

TeleVue…
Ranger
Nagler [type 1 & 6]: 13mm
Nagler zoom: 3-6mm
Radian: 6 & 8mm
Plossl: 8, 13 & 15mm

Svbony…
SV215 zoom: 8-3mm
‘redline’ UWA [68deg]: 6mm
’goldline’ UWA [66 deg]: 6mm

Meade…
DS-2102
ETX-105
Series 4000 UWA: 8.8mm
Plossl: 9.6, 20 & 25mm

Celestron…
C6/SCT
f6.3 FF/FR

Circle-T…
Ortho: 6 & 12.5mm
1.25” prism star diagonal

 

non-astro…
apple: iBook G4, MacBook, MacBook Air, iPad 2, iPad Air, iPod Nano 2, iPod Nano 3, iPod Touch 3, iPhone 5C, iPhone 6, iPhone 12

Edited Tuesday at 05:13 by RT65CB-SWL