worth upgrading Meade 4000 for planetary?

I have a couple of Meade 4000 Plossls (20mm and 26mm) which I use for good general purpose eyepieces, and now that I've recently acquired a 2.5x Powermate, they also form the low end of my planetary magnification range.

The consensus seems to me to be that these ep's fall a little bit short of either the Televues or the Ultima/Ultrascopic family. My 15mm Ultrascopic certainly is a nice performer.

Any views on how worthwhile it would be to upgrade to the TVs or "Ults"? Or is this just splitting hairs at this point?

I would consider any potential performance "improvements" yielded by Tele Vue plossls and/or Ultrascopics/Maximas/Gold Plossls to be subtle at most -- particularly at lower magnifications (i.e. ~15-50x). Longer scopes, such as an 8-inch f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain, would yield magnifications in the 80-100x range -- certainly a useful range, particularly with Luna. Still, differences would likely be minor at most. Minor enough that average seeing conditions (atmospheric turbulence) would likely erase or "hide" any differences from the eye, anyhoo.

If you're able, try and locate a fellow stargazer with one of those longer Tele Vue plossls or Ults/Maxs/Golds -- take a test drive and compare. *That's* going to provide your own best evidence.

If I were in your shoes, I'd be *quite* tempted to replace both the 20mm and 26mm Meades with a single wider-field eyepiece, such as the 23mm Axiom, 24.5mm Superwide, or the 24mm UO Konig (big $$ advantage over the other two). -But that's just me. :-)

Best wishes and luck.
-Dan