As a long time user and big fan of the Pegasus Powerbox Advance, I bought the Saddle Powerbox to remove the need to mount a Powerbox Advance onto the telescope itself. In that regard the Saddle Powerbox meets all my requirements, providing most of the functionality that I need in a convenient saddle format. It's probably the closest you can currently get to implementing a kind of aftermarket 'through the mount' cabling solution. The package itself came with a good complement of cables and the usual high-standard of supporting software I've come to expect from Pegasus. I bought an accompanying puck for attaching to the Avalon Linear mount in my observatory. All good!

So why have I dropped a star from an otherwise 5 star rated product. Well after installing the Saddle Powerbox I went straight to mounting my large and quite heavy 140mm refractor and discovered that I couldn't offer up the scope's Losmandy plate into the saddle clamps, as they will not go wide enough to accept the Losmandy plate directly. Instead I had to slide the entire scope in from the top. The pier in my observatory is quite tall, so it became quite a struggle to hold 13kg of scope at shoulder height with one hand whilst guiding the Losmandy plate into the jaws of the saddle clamps with the other. In addition, as saddle clamps provide a very snug fit for a Losmandy plate, the friction and weight of my refractor sliding into position took off a significant amount of the surface finish off the Saddle Powerbox's top face, to reveal the bare metal underneath. Once mounted though the unit is great. My challenge is that I swap scopes quite regularly so I'm not sure how manageable this will be over the longer term. I also expect the finish on the top face to be quite badly degraded after a few changes of my larger scope.

I did reach out to Pegasus support who were quick to respond and advise that this configuration is a deliberate safety feature, presumably to prevent an expensive telescope crashing to the floor in the event of the saddle failing to grip the scope properly. They also provided me with a step-by-step guide for dismantling and adjusting the width of the clamps myself if I would prefer to make them wider. However so far I have been unable to remove the set screws that fix the width of the clamps as they are screwed in so tight (I think they may be thread-locked in place).

In all I'm happy with the functionality provided by the Saddle Powerbox, though I think it'll probably end up being used more on my travel mount to support smaller and more lightweight scopes that are easier to slide into position from the top.