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I've been slewing my Orion Atlas by hand with the locking levers hand tight for a while now, and haven't had any issues.
I do not have the go-to hand controller, does this make a difference?

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Well, yes and no. It probably wouldn't hurt *in the short term* to have light pressure on the clutches if your mount won't hold still where you point it, but it is probably better in that case to solve the balance issue you have that is causing the mount to move while unlocked. On the EQ-6, the "clutch pads" that the clutch levers use to press against the worm wheels are made of brass, and so are the worm wheels. While moving them while lightly tightened might not hurt things in the short term I would expect them to wear over the long term and this could potentially be a problem. Getting replacement parts like worm wheels and clutch pads may not be easy.

In either case the clutch levers need to be locked tight while tracking in order to hold the scope in place in DEC and maintain accurate tracking in RA. If you don't have Go-To then you will almost certainly need to unlock the clutches to move the telescope from object to object. If you *do* have Go-To then the calibration of the Go-To computer will be ruined if you move the scope by hand unless you own one of the very few mounts that are set up to allow this. Most mounts (including the EQ-6 Pro) are not set up for this.

Hope this helps!

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"He's dead, Jim - I'll get his wallet, you get his tricorder." - Leonard "Bones" McCoy

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