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I'll start this way by sharing who makes (for their own brands and others) and owns what:
GSO, makes instruments for GSO and Bintel. Same gear, just Bintel pays for their label to be put onto the gear. Like Daniel said, made in Taiwan.
Synta, owns the following brands Celestron, Skywatcher, Tasco, Jason, Konus, Saxon, and a few others. They make their gear in China.
Both also outsource to other companies the production of some components.
While most people would think that there is little difference between the two, there actually is optical wise, which is more noticeable with the larger apertures.
When I was looking for a line of optics to offer directly through Gondwana Telescopes, I did not want to offer just 'good' optics. The investment in one of my scopes is a substantial one, so my criteria for optics had to be a 'better' quality. And there is no way around it, quality costs money.
So how does this relate to GSO vs Synta (Skywatcher)? Simple. While the first difference is price, Skywatcher optics are more expensive than GSO, there is a visual difference. I have looked through dozens of GSO and Skywatcher scopes, and the difference is always the same. The final polish of Skywatcher is time and again superior to GSO. You see this by doing a side by side comparison. Looking at the same object, at the same time, the image in the Skywatcher has significantly LESS scatter than the GSO. Black is black, not 'fuzzy grey'. Stars are sharper, and focusing is more positive as a result.
The price difference reflects this. To get the quality of image this good it takes longer, uses more materials, and has higher labour costs. And there is no way around this.
Now, the with the rest of the hardware, there are differences, and the pros and cons are pretty much evenly shared. Remember, these components are built first on price and speed of production. Quality is the compromise. This is why the after market is so large for focusers, spiders, mounts, eyepieces, mirror cells and so on. And even for optics, there are better quality primary and secondary mirrors, and they all cost more for the same reasons - it costs more to produce.
Carbon fibre tube vs steel tube? On the most part there is no overwhelming difference. Closed tube systems have other problems that as far as I can determine negates any difference between the two. Offering a CF tube is more of a marketing ploy than a thermo dynamic one. To argue that there is a weight difference is a mute one when you are dealing with the carrying capacity of mounts (if you are serious about imaging), the weight difference between a CF tube over a steel one is small percentages across the entire weight of the whole rig. If you are counting these percentages, you are going too light in your mount. You need to understand the way heat works in a closed system to justify one over the other, and then you still need to deal with the thermal problems. Open tube systems do not have the same issues. They have issues, yes, but half those of closed systems, and again less if the instrument is a visual one vs photographic.
Now, GSO or Skywatcher? For overall optical quality, Skywatcher has it between the two.
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