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ended up going with a more mainstream Ioptron CEM70
In case anyone is interested, in the end I put aside my hankerings for a premium mount until such time I have a more permanent setup.
Since I had the CEM40 and like it decided to buy it's new big brother, the CEM70 and I optron tri-pier. The head weight is a little lighter than the AZEQ6 but nominally this has 32Kg carrying capacity versus the AZEQ6's 20kg; not that I plan to get anywhere near that but can see me having a medium focal length payload between 15-18kg sometime next year.
The CEM70 claims to have +/- 3.5 arc second PE and they provide a graph with the mounts serial number that shows it has just that.
The CEM70 eagle landed in my backyard last night - see pics. All polar aligned like a snap (love Ioptron's ipolar) and I had enough clear sky for 30min or so to calibrate Phd2 and do a guiding assistant run (a negligible 300ms dec backlash which is pleasing; and for the 5-10min of guiding I got in before the clouds avalanched in was running 0.6-0.7arc-second and for the first time for me it even dropped below 0.5 arc second total RMS... not bad for a first run with a poorly balanced load (losmandy plate on espirit 100ed is too short, getting a longer one soon).
Some obligatory pics.
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