I own an LXD55 10″SN telescope from Meade Instruments. It’s a fine telescope, big mirror, decent enough mount (just), goto, tracking… However it is on the cheaper end of their catalogue thanks to the Schmidt Newtonian design – spherical primary mirror with a corrector plate at the front, this is cheaper to manufacture than their more popular (and expensive) Schmidt Cassegarians.
However the cost cutting didn’t end there. The gears backlash a bit, one is made form aluminium, the keys to hold the gears in place are not adequate and cause slop. So even though you have nearly EUR2000 worth of a scope it can be rendered useless unless you put the effort into maintaining it. I’ve now replaced all the dodgy or annoyingly placed bolts, and the scope performs much better. At a cost of an extra $40. I would much rather have paid Meade the $40 dollars to get these details right than to do it myself!
As a colleague once said “If I pay a million bucks for a machine, I expect to be able to swing out of the door!”. With a 15k you can, I have tried, and it works, though I’m a light guy! I’m not advocating that you repeat this experiment by the way. Now I don’t spend that kind of money on telescope kit, but I still expect the parts to be made to last, if that means a few dollars more onto the price tag to getter a better grade steel bolt then fine!