Disappearance of Leupold GRHD? (1 Viewer)

Steve C said:

I would not place any bets on that one. US manufacturers have not "made" their own optics for decades. The best you have is an early run of Gold Ring from when Leupold was still saying Assembled in the USA. They even dropped that pretense at some point before discontinuing the GR. For a time Leupold was making the chassis and some internal mounting mechanisms, but all the glass came from someplace in Japan. Leupold had a partner in Japan in development of the GR, I think it was Kowa. Look in this Leupold section for posts from "John from Scappose", he's the Leupold engineer responsible for the Yosemite and the Gold Rings. Seems he left in less than ideal circumstances, anyway it might be worth the search.

At any rate I agree it is a high quality glass.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I think Leupold did try to go with the Made in USA track for awhile, when they were making some of the components. They were forced into the Assembled in USA, to finally dropping all reference to source of origin.

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Could not find "John from Scappose", but thanks for the information.

Disapperarance of Leupold GRHD

Leupold has purchased optical (lens) components from Leitz Canada and Japan.
They (Leupold) have limited production (assembly) capability so they decided to contract out their binocular and spotting scope production to off shore.
They do their own QC according to price point on the imported glass and they have various warranty levels and honor those warranties.
It was rumored that Kowa and Light Optical had helped or consulted in design of the GRHD's.
There are 300+ firms in Japan that are involved in the optics trade, every thing from design consultation to production.
GRHD were very heavy for their size, hell for strong but heavy and many outdoors/hunter types wanted lighter weight optics. When that happened sales fell and they were discontinued.
My opinion only but I think Leupold has more than enough design work going and simply has not had time to devote to the redo of the GRHD's to make them competitive again.
Maybe they decided that they could not compete with Asian and European competition price wise, I have no idea and I am not privy to any inside information so this is all speculation on my part.
Thanks
Art