If it has the Pinnacle tube, yes it will be autogated. Most of the other choices, no. I will hand select at no charge, but honestly, being such a small operation, I am generally not picking from a large amount of inventory. That said, I have yet to receive a Pinnacle tube with low specs or noticeable blems. If I did, I would swap it out. SNR for Pinnacle tubes seems to be averaging between 28-29 lately, 64lp...in general, great specs. If you weren't happy with one you picked I would take it back and get you a new one.
The alpha's are also good performers. Most of the time they don't come with a spec sheet, but they have all been very good looking tubes so far.
I run the LR gen 3 Alpha with a USO 1.5-6. You can run it all the way down to 1.5 and see just fine, but you will see a slight blurry line extending about 1/4 of the way in to the picture. What you are seeing is the low battery/excessive light indicator. At 2-2.5x it disappears. At 12x I still get a crisp image. I have customers say they run it up to 17x, but in my experience 12x is the peak where you get an absolutely crisp image. Beyond that you can certainly still see what you are looking at, it just gets a little grainy.
April sale prices for the CO-LR are as follows.
Pinnacle $4,175
Alpha $3,950
Bravo $3,650
Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
Thanks!
Aaron