[The_bluester (Paul)]

I have been considering remounting my CPC925 Celestron for quite some time as the CPC mount is beginning to bug me with it's inherent limitations (Chiefly the inability to manually point)

The realistic options I can see are

1. Grit my teeth and ignore the issue.
2. Get a wedge for the AltAz mount, allowing me to polar align it and cheat the electronic alignment so I have tracking but no goto unless I switch off and star align properly.
3. Remount on an AZEQ6 and have the best of all worlds, tracking, AltAz convenience and the ability to manually after aligning the goto without undoing the alignment. Added to that is the ability to mount two scopes at once for simultaneous widefield use as well as higher mag with the SCT that I have now.
4. Put it on an NEQ6 or similar.

I have not really entertained the "Sell the lot and start again" approach as looking at the sort of prices what I have seems to command secondhand, there is little in it between selling up and starting again versus remounting, and I am happy with the optical performance of my gear.

When mounted on a GEM, how do people find eyepiece positioning of an SCT in various areas of the sky? I know it is not likely to end up as inconvenient as a newt can, but how do they actually fare? I know on an NEQ6 I can not manually repoint without losing the goto functionality, but the price difference is significant.

Obviously cheaper again would be just getting a wedge, but I get my nose out of joint at the thought of the price of a new once from a Celestron dealer in Aus, they are around double the US cost but freight cost would nearly stack up importing one to the same price.

For visual use, would the forthcoming AZEQ5 support my C925 OTA well? I am trying pretty hard to stay away from the AP slope, seeing that way is well lubricated with money.

If it were your money, which way would you jump? All of the options apart from "suck it up" gain me the ability to manually point without loosing tracking in the mount, but only the AZEQ6 (Or other similar mount like the AZEQ5 or other if there is one) allow manual pointing without loosing star alignment.