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Okay, i can speak in confidence on this subject with this mount.
I run with a LX200R 12" meade... and i don't think its much chop at all. This "Jitter" your talking about i know all to well about it.
How to get rid of it and sort out your imaging?
1 of 2 ways
Get rid of the meade forks and drop the ota onto a GEM (good optics crapola mountings/drive)
Run the Alt/Az drives on a Wedge. this way it elimiates the stepper motors up down left right movement. As this "drift" your seeing is the tracking keeping up. Think of it like your drawing in paint. no smooth lines just blocks, and to get around the corner its up, across, up, across.
Another problem that i observe is that if you have any hint of wind it accentuates the problem 10x and in that case forget imaging, and go back to visual as you will not notice the movements.
Something that will help you substantially is putting a Off Axis guide scope on the tube (off axis = a small scope on the side that can be pointed in the general direction allowing a guide star to be found) with a CCD or Web cam (mono and sensitive is what you want/need). What this will do is lock onto a point source and send commands to the mount telling it that the mount must move to x, y position to keep it locked on.
On the lx200r that i use im flat out getting a decent image that has minimal trails on anything less than 30 seconds.
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