[Shiraz (Ray)]

yep, EQ8 would make sense to me as well - should be OK with a 12 inch scope if the wind is not too bad. Built like a Russian army truck - no bells, whistles or finesse, just heavy duty brute force stuff with money only spent on the bits that do the work (like 8 inch wheels and high power motors). No glossy finishes - just screen printed labels, nondescript black surfaces and rust. Also be aware that it is really @#%$# heavy.

as pointed out, slewing accuracy is no issue with SGP plate solve - mine generally gets within a few pixels on the first retry in SGP. The EQ8 design is almost guaranteed to have some dec backlash, which can be managed. RA PE should be 7 arcsec p-p or less, but the worm rotates quite quickly, so you will need fairly fast guiding updates. At 7 arcsec p-p, you should not need PEC, unless you want to image without guiding - EQMOD PEC did not work with the EQ8, but I think that has been fixed. There are no transfer gearboxes - the motors drive the worms directly (1:1 belt for RA) - so there is none of the high frequency gear noise that can cause problems with other mounts.

software is dead easy - get the right plugs (power and drive) and your existing EQ6 EQMOD SGP software should then drive it with no mods at all. Which is just as well, because SW support for the mount is pretty well non-existent.