.:DISCUSSION::IS MEADE OVERPRICED?:.

[Whippy]

If you want to get on to rip-offs where the retail price ticket bears no relationship to the production cost, try music CDs (a £15 discs cost about 10p to produce, and typically less than 5p goes to the artists)

Without trying to take this off topic and further into another 'rip off Britain' thread, I've never heard of a record deal where the artist(s) gets 5p on every album sold. If a label I wanted to sign to showed me a deal like that, I'd laugh in their face and I was never into it for any monetary gain. The only deal I knew of that even came close was a label's standard deal for singles where the artist got 6p for every unit sold.

Tony..

[Adam Hinds2]

How is it ,you cant buy Astronomy gear on H P ?..............kev

telescopes will soon be available again on Buy Now Pay Later & Interest Free schemes

[adamsp123]

I would be very nervous when attached to a pair of skis which the maker had valued at only £9.

These were near top of the range ones, simply a hard injection molded glitzy outer shell filled with a softer flexible plastic.

But Brianb at least they match the planks of wooden skis into pairs of same stiffness/flexiblity characteristics.

But it is true in real terms telescopes are MUCH cheaper now than years ago.

[Astro_Baby]

Product always costs what it costs. Reebok trainers cost peanuts to make but you pay for the brand - you buy into the 'lifestyle' resonance if you buy them.

Are Meade overpriced ? I cant afford one right now so probably yes

Seriously though Meade have brand reputatation. It might be a bit tarnished by all those 90/125 ETXs that fail with busted gears and they might be in danger of getting beaten up by Synta but theres still something rather compelling about their big scopes.

And remember they may look expensive here but in the USA they may very well be competitive. You'd have to compare the prices stateside to really know.

When I look at their ads in US magazines they seem far more adroit than Celestron/Synta - better able to get their message out, more compelling in their sales pitch, better quality of advertising.

As an ex sales and marketing flak I was always nervous about price. Not that the companies I worked for were too expensive but rather we might be selling too cheap and nothing scared me more than people saying 'we'll have the lowest cost product on the market' low cost is always a bad strategy - someone will always make it cheaper than you can and once you have kicked the price out theres nowehere else to go.

[Adam Hinds2]

If a telescope doesn't do its job it is overpriced. Mirror flop, image shift, vignetting, poor focus, lousy tracking. There's your answer. A plague on both your houses, then, as far as SCTs go.

Olly.

and breathe!

[DAVPPK]

LOL

[Paxo]

I have attached a graphical representation of field flattness using CCD inspector across a KAF 3200 chip using a Celestron 6.3 reducer. This is better field flatness than I ever got with a Celestron Nextar 8" using the same set up! Note the collimation btw!

Nice collimation Martin, spot on. Just purchased a full frame Starlight Express H36, just waiting for some decent weather to see what the ACF optics look like for field flatness over a full frame CCD.

Steve..

[Astro_Baby]

Anyway - who cares - Meade pretty much only make SCTs and as everyone knows all the REAL telescope are reflectors :):)

[canuck]

Anyway - who cares - Meade pretty much only make SCTs and as everyone knows all the REAL telescope are...

...refractors!

[Adam Hinds2]

How is it ,you cant buy Astronomy gear on H P ?..............kev

There are a number of suppliers that offer finance as a payment option. A quick search of the web will bring them up

[Doc]

Last year you could pick up the 16" version of the Meade Lightbridge for £1100, this year the shops are selling it for £1800.

What gets me, why the big mark up. Yes it gives wonderful views, and for the £1100 is a bargain but for £1800 it now retails for, I think I would pass it by.

[MartinB]

I think the ACF will perform ok. I'd be very interested to see the CCDInspector reports. The problem you will have is when you come to use reducers because any flattening characteristics will really show up over the H36 chip. I have an AP 0.67 reducer which doesn't flatten. I'm planning on trying it with my ACF when I'm not using adaptive optics. Should be ok with the QHY8 I think but a reduced image and the big H36 chip will be a big challenge for an SCT.

Nice collimation Martin, spot on. Just purchased a full frame Starlight Express H36, just waiting for some decent weather to see what the ACF optics look like for field flatness over a full frame CCD.

Steve..

[Dangerous-Dave]

The Meade 5000 series 127 triplet is about the cheapest scope of its kind you can buy.