Testar - now the official Takahashi dealer...

[gdrabs]

Just got an email from Testar saying they are now the official Takahashi dealer in Australia....

[AnakChan]

Someone just showed that to me today too. Does that mean Claude/AEC's no longer a distributor? Or has he lost exclusive distributorship?

[Wilso]

Off their website today!

[Peter Ward]

Quite the coup....if it is true.

While Claude likes to chat, i never had a problem with AEC or their pricing...it was often significantly less than uS dealers.

Having had a FSQ on backorder for well over a year, I am curious to see how this and similar orders will be honoured if Taka really have dumped AEC

[Hans Tucker]

According to their website Takahashi have stopped taking orders for the FC-100DZ, FSQ-106, and e160ED.

If Testar could set themselves up like TNR and offer local servicing of Takahashi products that would be a bonus.

Takahashi products are now on the Testar website.

[gregbradley]

Wow, an FSQ106EDX 4 is now $12,499 plus accessories.

A TOA150 is $28K plus accessories!

The FSQ106 really needs a refresh to catch up with the high resolving 3.76 micron pixelled full frame cameras.

Greg.

[gdrabs]

I agree - it would be nice if Testar/Tak could work together and get local servicing on board.

[Hans Tucker]

Takahashi Japan did announce that they would be increasing their price with effect 1st December.

https://www.takahashijapan.com/ct-news/topics/22xi01_info.html

Since the JPN YEN and AUD are nearly on parity the mark up seems high

[Peter Ward]

Suffice to say I placed the FSQ order (and deposit) before the last round of price rises....$12.5k seems rather unreasonable. I hope AEC will still deliver at the quoted price which was significantly below Testar's

[UniPol]

I’ve always found Peter Tan from SUN EAST TECHNOLOGY CO in Hong Kong to provide a great service selling Tak scopes, parts and accessories at very fair prices. In fact he has been able to get parts and accessories for my Tak scopes that I have been told here in Australia don’t exist or can’t get. The current prices listed makes me think that I’ll be keeping hold of my Tak collection for now and even my Astro-Physics StarFire 130 GTX seems reasonable in comparison.

[Hercules.Steel]

It would be lovely if an Australian servicer could re-collimate TOA's if there's ever an issue...

[Hodur]

Having seen Testars setup, yes, they could recollimate. Their facility is a full blown optics lab, with a custom concrete slab.
Edit… if your in Sydney, drop by their Brookvale facility, you’ll be amazed. The amount of optical test equipment is staggering. I’ve a feeling that may be in part the how and why of securing the Tak Agency

[glend]

Hands up anyone who has had to recollimate a good refractor? Not many I bet. I have built a good refractor and as long as your cell is collimatible, it's easy to setup and keep collimated. It only requires a properly collimated laser and an understanding. The illusion that TAKs are some kind of exotic astro witchcraft, are just that an illusion. I suspect TAK avoids buyers messing about with collimation by making it difficult, and heck we can charge them heaps for it later.

[UniPol]

I recall having to collimate my Tak SKY-90 some years ago but was relatively simple as it is only a doublet. A William Optics FLT-110 triplet I bought off IIS some years ago was sent to WO in Taiwan to be cleaned and collimated as it had mould on the middle element ( the seller didn’t disclose that at the time). Only the cell had to be sent and WO charged a flat rate of $100 USD including return postage for this service. I received it back in about six weeks and it was absolutely pristine and perfectly collimated and all up cost me around $150 USD. I believe Tak insist on sending the OTA back to Japan and remember Claude telling me once that freight within Japan is very expensive, you could be looking at $2000 all up to have a TOA-130 cleaned and re-collimated (and months to boot). It would be great if a professional cleaning and collimating service could be offered here in Australia, peace of mind at least if anything untoward happened to our pride and joys.

[gdrabs]

Thanks for sharing that, sounds great....
Adriano from Testar has confirmed they do recollimate and he is also heading to Japan for training at Takahashi.

[toc]

All I can say is that we are very fortunate to have vendors that provide such excellent support...

[Ryderscope]

I see that as of this morning the Takahashi stock is no longer present on the AEC web site. It was there yesterday but gone this morning.

[Peter Ward]

I heard from AEC yesterday, they will no longer be handling Taka. Customers who have already placed orders (many did so some time ago) will have them fulfilled by AEC. Testar will be handling them going forward from here.

[Hercules.Steel]

Wow. That is great to know. Always my biggest fear was a drop or a hard bump and then a return to Japan at significant cost.