Deal fell apart. If I am dropping that sort of cash I want to see the item before I buy. I'll have the money to buy new at the end of the year and have the scope in hand 4 months later.

As a sound guy, you will love this. Etalons the purpose of these solar scopes is to be able to view the light from the Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) emission line. This is the most common light in the universe and is normally very hard to see. They sun, being big and bright, is an exception. The problem is that Ha light is just outside of normal human vision in the Infrared area of the EM spectrum. Enter an etalon. Using mirrored surfaces and a few lenses, you can adjust the wavelength on the light entering and with the new stuff, you can use the Doppler Effect to alter the bandpass of the wavelengths of light that finally hit your eye. The way I try to explain it to people is that ir is sort of like autotune, but for light, not sound.

The filters are not cheap, as you saw. But they look amazing. With this one you can see the magnetic lines around sunspots, see prominences, and on days of good still air, you can see the granules on the sun's surface. 80mm seems to be the best as far as costs, weight, and what you can see. I was able to get a 60mm and use it for a while and it is amazing what you can see and show with them. I want the 80mm as it will be easier to show the transit of Mercury coming up next year, and I can try to do some photography with it. And as we enter the slow period for visible sunspots, I can at least have something to show people during the day. with both blocking filters (the second filter is $1500) it produces a 3D effect at the eyepiece that is really amazing to look at.