so deer sniping is life and death?..![]()
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so deer sniping is life and death?..![]()
That is not the norm.
Is this not a matter of perspective?I mean, a $50K car does a lot more and has more utility than a $1K riflescope or even a $4K riflescope. That comparison is...not apt.
Then I wouldn't have posted? Maybe I would have agreed? The use cases are different enough to me that I thought it was an odd comparison. It works for you, it must work for your customers. In the end I don't disagree with you, I just thought it was an odd way to convey it. Luxury car in the garage (and not a 'my first luxury car' type thing) and AI in the safe; I get it.What if I were to choose a comparison which was palatable to you based on a different item of great expense?
Out of curiosity, what problems have you had with Nightforce.We certainly enjoy a lower cost of living out here in the sticks. Houses are cheap. Dirt is expensive.![]()
I know bro, but still, you gotta' admit, for an almost 1000.00 scope, that is pretty damn nutty. Mechanical tracking issues? Sure. Parallax off? You bet. If I spent 1000.00 never in a million years would I think the eyepiece was going to pop out, especially on a .308.
ETA - I also wanted to mention that I know the PST's aren't up to the 2-3k tier optics, obviously. I buy Kahles optics, which are quite a bit more than PST's. I will speak for myself here when I say that I think it is easy to start getting into this mindset of thinking that just because the scopes are not 2-3k, they must not be that good, and that some problems should be expected. I have to remind myself that 1000.00 is still a lot of damn money, and several years ago, I was stoked to buy my SSHD's and Bushnell DMR's. Even then, I could never foresee lenses popping out on either of those scopes.
No, its not open to perception of the user. It's simple numbers. On one end a guy can get a airsoft rifle scope for about $30 and on the other end they can get a hensoldt at $7,000. That means a $1000 scope is still very much at the bottom end of the spectrum.What exactly constitutes low, middle, and high end optics is also the perception of the user. I guarantee you the large majority of scope buyers consider a $1000 scope to be expensive. We are a small niche here on the Hide.
No, its not open to perception of the user. It's simple numbers. On one end a guy can get a airsoft rifle scope for about $30 and on the other end they can get a hensoldt at $7,000. That means a $1000 scope is still very much at the bottom end of the spectrum.
Now if you want to argue this from a "numbers of scopes sold" standpoint, then yes, the vast majority of scopes are beneath $1000. Yet we aren't on a site where those shitty scopes are discussed... are we? So as it bears the crowd here and this discussion... a $1000 scope is low end shit and it has nothing to do with anyone's perception. If you don't believe me, then start a poll thread and ask people how much money they've spent on their best rifle scope. $1000 scope will not be the majority I would bet.
When a scope recommendation thread shows up, how many scopes beneath $800 are even mentioned? Almost zero. So the fact that $1000 scopes are low end is and has been established as fact.
Ok ILya, name a single scope beneath $1000 that isn't routinely mentioned here in a "my shit broke" thread. Is it more common to see a $1000 scope mentioned in those threads, or a $3500 scope?
some have asked about the PST 2, I bought a 3-15 SFP model. it showed 3/4 MOA of reticle shift at 20 minutes. the reticle would just vear right as you cranked the knob in my static scope testing fixture. I returned the scope to the store and the next one did the exact same thing. took it back and traded for a nightforce. The PST 2 has all the features and the price is excellent. I just can't deal with tracking issues. the good news is if you do keep the pst 2, the reticle shift could account for spin drift.
For sake of this discussion, suppose I agree with you and defer to the claim that $1000 scopes are expensive. Then what? We're immediately pointed back to the reality that some products fail at a greater rate than others. I would agree that the burris xtr II's seem quite good in comparison to other offerings, which is why that is what I've recommended in that price range.
So when it comes back around, here we are with the same facts at hand that some are unwilling to accept. Pay your money, take your chances... or pay more money and take less of a chance.
Both you and Ilya have good points and you both are actually correct.For sake of this discussion, suppose I agree with you and defer to the claim that $1000 scopes are expensive. Then what? We're immediately pointed back to the reality that some products fail at a greater rate than others. I would agree that the burris xtr II's seem quite good in comparison to other offerings, which is why that is what I've recommended in that price range.
So when it comes back around, here we are with the same facts at hand that some are unwilling to accept. Pay your money, take your chances... or pay more money and take less of a chance.
the reticle shifts in a linear fashion to the right, which would move POI left as the reticle travels downward, remember the reticle adjusts the opposite of POI. 20 MOA is about all the adjustment I ever will need in my scope. so that is the distance I am most concerned with. its about 3/4 MOA of right shift at 20 minutes. This is something that you probably can't see in actual shooting. its very easy for wind or other factors to cause a shift like that at 800-1000 yards. you will see the error but unless you know why its there your probably not going to figure out why its happening. When your shooting at distance every little thing can cause you to not be hitting exactly where you want. it will be about 8 inches of error at 1000 yards though, but if you don't enable spin drift you will probably be right on.I didn't even notice that they make a SFP version of that.
I have a FFP one and I do not see that. I will doublecheck.
What kind of shift are you seeing? How close are you to the edge of the adjustment range? Is the amount of the shift effected by the side-focus?
ILya
the reticle shifts in a linear fashion to the right, which would move POI left as the reticle travels downward, remember the reticle adjusts the opposite of POI. 20 MOA is about all the adjustment I ever will need in my scope. so that is the distance I am most concerned with. its about 3/4 MOA of right shift at 20 minutes. This is something that you probably can't see in actual shooting. its very easy for wind or other factors to cause a shift like that at 800-1000 yards. you will see the error but unless you know why its there your probably not going to figure out why its happening. When your shooting at distance every little thing can cause you to not be hitting exactly where you want. it will be about 8 inches of error at 1000 yards though, but if you don't enable spin drift you will probably be right on.
from now on, I test every scope I mount. as for me unless the scope is made in Japan, the US or europe it has not place on my guns. the phillipino optics, like the burris XTR's are coming out of the phillipines too. probably same factory. I think their scopes are close but they aren't in the same league as the stuff from LOW in japan![]()
If I started a poll asking the average amount spent on a scope I bet you $1000 would be very much in the hunt. If not less than that. Even on this site.
$1000 to $1500 scopes are high end to most people. They don't care there that are $3000 scopes in the world, because they think spending 3k on a scope is stupid. And the people who spend that kind of money on a scope are idiots and rich snobs. Never in their entire lives will these people even consider a 3K scope. They aren't even on the radar. So yes, a $1000 scope is top of the line for these people, and regardless of what anyone else here on this forum or any other may think, that is their perception. And there are far more of these people out there in the world than there are of us.
All of that is of course beside the point. My point is that anything in that price point should still be a durable scope. That's plenty of money to shell out to achieve something that has a decent manufacturing quality.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but there really are some decent scopes in that price range these days. As durable as a 3k scope? Hard to say. But I certainly don't expect them to break easily, or over stupid things like a screw fell out or the turret fell off. If you know what I mean![]()
For sake of this discussion, suppose I agree with you and defer to the claim that $1000 scopes are expensive. Then what? We're immediately pointed back to the reality that some products fail at a greater rate than others. I would agree that the burris xtr II's seem quite good in comparison to other offerings, which is why that is what I've recommended in that price range.
So when it comes back around, here we are with the same facts at hand that some are unwilling to accept. Pay your money, take your chances... or pay more money and take less of a chance.
I've been reading without commenting until now but feel that misconception warrants a response. The concept that product warranties are, in any way, a measure of the respective product's actual quality is one of the greatest fallacies in business. Lee Iacocca (the world’s biggest mouth...!?!), while at Chrysler, significantly increased the standard warranty all while knowing the company's quality was actually declining, and expected to get worse before it got better (it did...). Said warranties are often a smoke-screen, meant to camouflage an inherent lack of real quality. The above re. Chrysler is well-documented fact, not opinion, and easily researched by anyone so inclined (JD Power et al.) I don't mean to imply that is, or is not, the case with Vortex, or any other optics manufacturer for that matter. I just hope to put to rest the idea that a warranty is any reflection of actual product quality. The warranty may affect the consumer's perception of quality, which is what the manufacturer clearly hopes, but it is often no indicator whatsoever of said manufacturer's belief in its product's actual quality (Lee Iacocca certainly knew the truth about Chrysler despite the annoyingly persistent TV commercials during which he claimed otherwise...)As far as warranty goes, genrally that tells you how confident the manufacturer is in their product.
I made a spreadsheet of their typical prices at the time when I acquired them and it averaged out to just over $900. Now given that I've had some of these for a long time and there is inflation, we can round it up to $1k.
I suspect that there is a bunch more stuff in there that I forgot about, but I suspect that if I forgot about it, it is not that expensive.
Mr Birddog might be onto something with his estimate.
As I said, pay your money, take your chances.I paid a decent amount of money for a Premier....turned out that was still most certainly a roll of the dice, as you well know. Binary thinking leads one to believe that spending more money = taking less risk. Risk mitigation is actually rather complex, it might be comfortable to continue believing that the number of threads discussing malfunctions is a reliable way to assess reliability - except it isn't
Had a razor 2 die this weekend in a match. Pretty sure something in it was starting to loosen up mid way through the match, as I had some off call shots, most of which still made impacts, but a couple that didn't. I was 2 points off the lead going into the last stage, and all of a sudden I couldn't hit anything. Missed the final target at 450 yards by over a foot. I took it back out yesterday and it shot a 4" group at 100 and couldn't hold a 10" plate consistently at 300 yards. Swapped scopes and my groups went back to 1/2 moa or better. The odd thing is the turrets are still moving the reticle, but POI is shifting shot to shot. I guess I'm glad it died then versus the Bushnell match this weekend, but I still wouldn't have expected something that costs $2000+ to fail under 6.5 creedmoor recoil after less than 1000 rounds.
Wooo, poor people club/filthy unwashed masses, what's up playa!Lest Mr TT Dealer come jump in to claim 'poor-ness' as the reasoning, there's a fair amount of $ where I live (and I'm making a good enough chunk of it), and while I certainly could buy a TT, the benefit per $ isn't there in my own calculations. I may yet move to some Minoxes, however.![]()
I have had problems with almost all of the Vortex scopes I have owned. A brief history:
First Vortex was a 6.5-20 Viper with BDC reticle. It was returned because turning the windage turret made 0 changes to the POI.
Second scope was a Vortex Diamondback 4-12. Scope performed just fine, no issues.
Third was a 6-24 Crossfire. This scope's elevation turret had something wrong with it. Long story short, the last 7-10 (can't remember) minutes of "up" elevation would not move the POI whatever those last several minutes remaining were.
Fourth was a 4-16 PST. Unfortunately, I sold that rifle and optic not long after I mounted the optic, so can't give a true recounting of it's performance other than stating that for the short time I owned it, there were no issues, it was good to go.
Then, I bought two of the the Gen 1 Razors at the same time:
I got the first one mounted up and noticed there was some internal reticle cant. It was explained to me that this cant was insignificant and well within the specs of these scopes. I had no idea, I just knew it was not plumb. The second had been used for about 4-6 months. I was at a match, showing off my Razor to one of the shooters when the MD walked up (a person I am not too terrible fond of anyhow) and said, "Vortex huh? You know why they have an unlimited lifetime warranty? Because you're going to need it." It was not longer than four hours later that I was in the later stages of that match when the elevation turret started slipping; something came loose in the elevation turret and I could no longer dial my elevation (Vortex was able to help me fix this over the phone but the match was long over by then). With the MD's comments having come to fruition just hours after he made the comment, I was absolutely infuriated (you guys can imagine what he was saying when he learned of the issue).
After those issues, I went on an "anti Vortex" bender for a while. Then the Gen 2 Razors came out. I swallowed some humble pie and bought another pair of those. On one of them, the set screws in the elevation turret backed themselves out (assuming to have been due to recoil). The interesting issue regarding this, is that I have a good friend who had the exact same issue occur with his. He called Vortex and said that Vortex's response was one that indicated they were well-aware of the issue, and in fact, had a "fix" for it. After learning of this, I did just a tiny bit of research and found this from BigJimFish's review of the Gen 2 Razor, found here: opticsthoughts.com/?p=1456
In that review (about half way down the page), he stated, "Also of note is that the elevation set screws loosened up once during testing..." I then heard about this same issue from two other shooters with these same scopes.
The warning with regards to this elevation set screw deal was to make sure you put enough torque on them so they didn't slip. After I recognized this as a relatively common concern, I became somewhat obsessed with making sure these damn set screws weren't backing out. For 2k+, I did not feel like I should have to check these screws before, during and after matches.
These are just my personal experiences with the brand. There are quite a few friends I have that have had experiences with Vortex's optics as well, including the Razor line.
I recognize that some of these issues may not be significant, but they could definitely fuck up a hunt or comp, and we all know how much money can go into those. Furthermore, having owned multiple optics in the similar price range (SWFA SSHD line, Bushnell Tac line), and having had zero issues, it is extremely difficult to have confidence in the Vortex brand.
I don't want this to come across as a "let's bash the shit out of Vortex" post, but experiences need to be shared. If Nightforce, Kahles, S&B, et al...are having issues, I would hope that we would share those as well. I also want to recognize the contribution that Vortex makes to the shooting sports. Vortex has been excellent for all of the shooting sports and has been one of the most supportive companies with regards to LE and mil folks, which simultaneously makes it difficult to criticize them.
Regarding your GenII turret screws coming loose, I also wouldn’t claim this as adefect or malfuction and would clasify this under user error. To avoid over or undertightening the outer turret set screws, I contacted Vortex for torque specs. Where Vortex dropped the ball was not listing this in the owners manual but a quick call to a helpful CS rep got me the info I need to avoid a User Error situation. I was told they should be torqued to 8-12in/lb. I immediately called the helpful people at Fixit Sticks and ordered a 10in/lb torque limiter for my set. I noticed I was not tightening those little screws nearly as hard as I should once I used the limiter. Haven’t had any issues since. Highly recommend getting good tools to help in the User Error QC Dept, saves a lot of unnecessary headaches.
In the end, Vortex may make an occasion bad scope but crying foul on their quality because of your torque value is sad and avoidable as were his issues.
If you want to be a troll do it somewhere else like ar15.com, not here.
I noticed I was not tightening those little screws nearly as hard as I should once I used the limiter.
Vertical split rings in the ADM Mount ?
What's funny is, I need a limiter for the opposite reason. I over-gorillaed one of the turret lock screws on my AMG and marred the surface of the piece that has the markings on it under the turret cover. That's what you're actually tightening the screws onto - and then it in turn moves the brass erector piece when you turn the turret. So, what would happen then is that when I went to change zero slightly, it would slip back into the old position.
Vortex diagnosed the user error over the phone and sent me two of the parts in the mail - it was easily swapped and 100% corrected the problem. They also gave me a way to make an educated guess at the right torque using the tool included with the scope. Basically, when the tool flexes while you're tightening it, it should be good to go.
The FAT wrench has a tough time getting to one screw, so I'll have to get a different solution (FixIt Sticks, or Borka) to do it accurately in the future.
Take my razor 2 off the list. Scott talked through it with me and suggested swapping rings. Tested this morning and it's shooting and tracking great. I think the clamp on the rings was bottoming out before it got full clamp force on the rail.
dang, thats good but sucks at the same time it showed up during the match
Take my razor 2 off the list. Scott talked through it with me and suggested swapping rings. Tested this morning and it's shooting and tracking great. I think the clamp on the rings was bottoming out before it got full clamp force on the rail.
So I understand this clearly, your Gen 1 Razor was fixed over the phone. Unless they were instructing you in how to glue it back together it sounds more like user error than a defective scope. Could you tell us what it was you were told to do over the phone in case another user has the same issue?
Regarding your GenII turret screws coming loose, I also wouldn’t claim this as adefect or malfuction and would clasify this under user error. To avoid over or undertightening the outer turret set screws, I contacted Vortex for torque specs. Where Vortex dropped the ball was not listing this in the owners manual but a quick call to a helpful CS rep got me the info I need to avoid a User Error situation. I was told they should be torqued to 8-12in/lb. I immediately called the helpful people at Fixit Sticks and ordered a 10in/lb torque limiter for my set. I noticed I was not tightening those little screws nearly as hard as I should once I used the limiter. Haven’t had any issues since. Highly recommend getting good tools to help in the User Error QC Dept, saves a lot of unnecessary headaches.
That same range trip with my new torque limiter I watched a guy getting his new Blaser in 300 RUM with big NF optic set up in a lead sled for a “muley hunt”. Was trying to get it “point blank zero’d” at 200yrds but wasn’t hitting at 300 on 18”x18” paper. Offered my torque wrench set but he had it all figured out. Asked him what app he was using for his dope and he said he didn’t need it for his “point blank zero”, the info he needed was on the box. Too often the American independent mentality is foolishly humorous because we think we know better. I am sure he will complain that the Blaser can’t hit the broad side of a barn and the NF doesn’t hold zero or some shit. Yet if you checked his setup you would find ranom torque values, incorrect scope adjustments and every other user adjusted value out of spec.
In the end, Vortex may make an occasion bad scope but crying foul on their quality because of your torque value is sad and avoidable as were his issues.
So the scope works fine for a few months and stops working toward the second half of a match after I haven't touched the thing, and in your opinion, it's "more user error." LOL! Keep telling yourself that.
"Could you tell us what it was you were told to do over the phone in case another user has the same issue?" Dude, this was how many years ago now? It was something to the effect of peeling the turret cap off and turning the entire spindle setup down, IIRC.
"Regarding your GenII turret screws coming loose, I also wouldn’t claim this as adefect or malfuction and would clasify this under user error." Well, I guess it's a good thing I don't buy 2,000.00+ optics off of the opinion of random internet guy, now, isn't it? You have no idea what I did to try and rectify that situation, so speaking to it, and making assertions isn't going to prove your point and may make you look even more obsequious than you already do.
"In the end, Vortex may make an occasion bad scope but crying foul on their quality because of your torque value is sad and avoidable as were his issues." Stop it, now you're just being sycophantic.
So I have a number of Kahles scopes at this point. You know what I did? I took them out of the box, TORQUED THEM DOWN WITH MY WHEELER FAT WRENCH, zeroed them, set the zero stops, and started shooting.
Do you know how many times I have had to TORQUE the elevation turret cap set screws with my WHEELER FAT WRENCH? In fact, even typing that out sounds stupid; point being, you shouldn't have to torque down elevation turret cap set screws. I had never done that with any other scope, and I've had quite a few at this point. Anyhow, with regards to my Kahles, I didn't torque them down, I used the fucking allen wrench provided and tightened them until they were finger tight. Guess what has not come loose? I had to laugh at the poor guy up top here who tightened his AMG screw down so tight that it marred the surface of that assembly. I'm starting to wonder what your's looks like with 10in/lbs. My buddy was advised 8 when he called in.
Furthermore, I have yet to be out shooting, need to dial my elevation, and the turret just spins freely. I haven't yet had that experience with my Kahles.
So now I have to know your opinion on how the one guy fucked up and his eyepiece lense fell out on his PST. What did he do (or not do) to have that happen? I'm guessing he didn't use a torque wrench to tighten the ring cap screws, and so he tightened them so much, he literally squeezed the scope tube until it popped out. If only he would've used "good tools," it may have helped him in the "User Error QC Dept."