I have a 10 year old Celestron CGEM DX, which I purchased new. Other AP'ers consider the CGEM a lower quality mount, but it does carry its weight. However, the older CGEM's, like mine, may have had a better quality build than the newer ones made by Synta (I don't really know because the design has not really changed). I have mixed results with this mount; some nights it works like a charm and others I cannot get it to calibrate (I have an OAG with a Lodestar guide camera and have always used Phd1 or 2). I too think it depends on seeing and where in the sky I am looking. I do rebalance the mount to keep it East side heavy where ever the scope is pointed. But I don't know what to do about Dec (I purchases some ankle weights that I thought I might try using to keep it South heavy as well). On a good night my Cal looks like this:

and my guiding can look like this for several hours:



I will not spend the money for a much better mount (2-5x times), so I am thinking of purchasing a "hypertune" kit that will replace the bearings and worm gears with better quality ones. Also, my mount is very stiff; it does not rotate freely and I suspect it has the old 'black' grease in it that makes it sluggish, the kit comes with newer grease. Running it with Kstars/Ekos (as I have done for the past several years)is fine and goto's have greatly improved with plate solving. I can "slew" dead on to a target with usually only 2 solves. So I don't think there is anything wrong with the mount and that is why I am thinking I should not try fix it! But I do think it could work better.

Ron

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