Quote:
Originally Posted by ausastronomer
That hasn't always been the case. Historically going back to the 1970's, 80's and up to the mid 90's, "SOME" Tasco products were very good indeed. Quite a few of their refractors, binoculars and riflescopes were made by Towa Optical in Japan and Vixen Optical in Japan. The products from those manufacturers are first rate. Of course they also distributed products from other manufacturers during those years which were not first rate and ultimately led to TASCO earning a sometimes less than favourable reputation amongst consumers. If you know what you're looking for, you can actually find a TASCO bargain on the 2nd hand market and get a very good product.
Cheers,
John B
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After the stick I've been giving John in another thread I thought I'd wholeheartedly support some of his comments I've just noted here....!
Back in 1970 (that's almost 40 years ago!) an acquaintence brough a 4.5" Tasco newt on EQ around for me to collimate: I suppose he'd heard that I was the only person he knew at all who had some experience with these things.....
He left it with me and never came back, and being the magpie I am I've carted it around (sometimes very unceremoniously) through the intervening decades.
And want to know what? It's dusty and dirty (plastic shopping bags as dust covers that have long disintergrated etc) and full of spider webs, but when I dragged it out of my junk shed the other day and pushed away the cobwebs there, shining still with no visible deterioration on it, was the primary at the end of the tube! The secondary looks almost as well-preserved. I'll clean it up and check it out someday soon, but I do remember that when I collimated it all those decades ago, its performance, even with the .965 Huygens (and about his era in optical advancement) was actually quite staisfying indeed! And I had a reasonable scope at the time (home made from an Astro-optical supplied 8" primary) to do some basic quantifying from.
So as John said, not all Tasco's are rubbish!
Cheers, Darryl.