Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics What makes Swarovski better...???

One story repeated a thousand times doesn't make it an epidemic in my book.

If you want examples of Swaro AV that have gone bad, I suggest you ask Mule Deer about his experiences. His information is quite detailed. E

I've got two swarovski scopes, an AV 3x10x42 and a PV 2.5x10x56, wonderful optics and I've never had a lick of trouble out of either of them. I've also got a pair of 10x42 slc's and they've been great also. The only first hand experience I've ever had with a swarovski going bad was a 4x14 AV on a remington M700 .338 ultramag that broke. The owner asked me to look at it because it wouldn't group and I figured out the scope was busted. When I took the scope off the rifle for him to send back to swarovski I discovered that the front base screws were sheared, I suspect that's what caused it. The mounts were standard leupolds with the windage adjustable rear base, not what I would have put on that rifle. In a week he had the scope back, I fixed the mounts, and it's been shooting fine ever since. I suspect that any scope would have failed on a 338 ultramag under those conditions.

On the other hand I've had to send a leupold VariX-II mounted on a 30-06 back to leupold for a busted erector assembly. Going by scopes I've personally owned I'm 100% with swarovski and something less than that with leupold. That doesn't mean that I don't like leupolds, I've got a bunch of them, but they can break as well as any of them.

Between my hunting partners and myself, we've got decades of experience with swarovski binos and scopes. In my opinion they're as tough as any out there and tougher than most. We've had excellent service out of them and it's conforting to know that they have excellent customer service to back them up even though it's rarely needed. Emericus's constant anti-swarovski rants negate any credibility he had, one has to wonder what's behind the tantrums especially since it doesn't seem that he has any actual experience with any swarovski product. He's the boy that cried wolf too often.

Never did get an honest answer to this...........

Yep,two pre production prototypes gave problems.
dave

I've used Swaro scopes and bin's for probably 20 years from the older Nova range to the PH and I've never had a hint of a problem..

Having said that I know of a couple that have gone bad for other people, but its usually after an "incident" such dropping a bino out of a highseat or a rifle blowing up...When things do go wrong, Swaro have a reputation for excellent customer service, very often sending out a "loaner" item while the faulty one goes back to Austria to be fixed...

LOL i bet that would even hurt a leupold!

Sako 75,

I had to drive the guy in question off the mountain to meet the ambulance. The rifle was a Tikka 6.5x55mm and it was destroyed.

The bottom "metal" (actually plastic) inclunding the magazine were all over the floor in the form of shrapnel. The wooden stock was in 3 with the middle section near the chamber completely shattered. The bolt as jammed shut and later when a 'smith tried to tap it open with the palm of his hand, the handle fell off..I lug and some associated metal had actually sheared off the bolt proper and it was only this jamming everything up that stopped the bolt comming back like a humane killer.

The guy had a face full of shrapnel, most of it from the plastic bolt shrowd and he was in hospital 3 or 4 days while they worked to save the sight in his eyes. When they eventually let us take him go home, he was under a local eye Specialist for several months..

With regards the scope, it survived more or less intact, but when he evetually came to use it again, it appeared that it wasn't holding its zero. Having said that, considering what had happened, flinching might have been an issue as well!

Regards,

Peter

Maybe they re better but 4 times more expensive and only 10 years of warranty for the Z6 ....!!! not really a bid deal for that ...

Since when is a Z-6 four times the price of a vx-7?Each is it's respective companies upper level hunting scope.

Or if you want to skew things by not comparing scopes of the same level,the z-3 is cheaper than the vx-7.

Good response. I have Swarovski, Schmidt & Bender, Zeiss, Leupold, Weaver, and Burris scopes and the only reason they aren't all Swarovski, Zeiss (not Conquest, but Diavari) and Schmidt is simply that I don't need the better optics in all the applications, so Leupold is my next best scope. I don't want to make light of Leupold either as NO manufacturer will back their product like Leupold. The rest just fit a niche where a scope is better than iron sights. And yes I have at least a couple dozen guns with no optics at all.

For the record, I have had two Swarovski 3-9x AV's go bad on me. One was in 1993 (before they were called AV's) and that one was repaired and worked perfectly afterward. It had been on a .30-06 for a year or so before I put it on a .375 H&H, which apparently shook one of the adjustment springs loose in short order.

The second was in 2003 when a scope that had been on several rifles (the most powerful a .300 H&H) and was at that time on a 7mm SAUM started shooting larger groups, in the 3-4" range. I put another scope on the same rifle and it went back to shooting 3/4" groups. This time I sent it back to Swarovski through one of their ad guys, and he claimed nothing was wrong with it. He was fired a few years ago, which was probably a good decision, since he lied about a lot of stuff.

Other than that I have never had a Swarovski go bad, and doubt that many do. I recently tested one of the new Z3's and it worked perfectly for a lot of rounds on a NULA .30-06. I also have notoriously bad luck with new scopes.

In recent years I have also seen some failures in Leupolds. Last fall my wife had a new 3.5-10x40 VX-III go sproing, and it needed a new leaf spring as well. I have also seen more than one Leupold that wouldn't focus precisely in the past few years.

If Eremicus would shoot a wider variety of scopes a lot, he might actually have something to report on.

In fact even comparing the vx-7 to the z-6 isn't fair,since the vx-7 has less than a 4x magnification range,compared to 6x with the z-6.Leupold makes no scope to compare to the z-6,so the vx-7 should be compared to the pv,which coincidentally is priced very close to the vx-7.

If E would only post about scopes that he has actually used,he wouldn't post about very many scopes at all.

Thanks Mule Deer for your reply, have you tried the new Z3 as of yet?

Yeah, just tested a Z3 3-9x and rated it the best lightweight (12 oz.) 3-9x I have ever tried. Very fine optics and the adjustments were right on, with one exception that took a shot to bounce into place.

I am doing some optics evaluation stuff for TEXAS SPORTING JOURNAL, a very nice magazine, and the review just appeared there.

E will be so disappointed to read that.

Thanks for the info MD. I'll have to check out that new TX Sporting Journal. Thanks for the heads up.

John, thanks for the heads up on the scope reviews. I'll have to try to locate that magazine if available here on the eastcoast.

do they have online version? I don't think my bookstore carries the state by state magazine.