[adifrank]

Thanks Wim for the reply. I actually got into a bit of a panic and immediately after posting about the lens I drove out to the vendor from which I bought it. There I checked two other copies of the same model. They both had this stiffness in the zoom rotation between 24-28mm, but they didn't have the slight grinding feeling and small squeak which my copy had. They said it isn't a mechanical problem, but offered me to swap mine with any of the other two they showed me.



So I guess that is the end of that. (hopefully....)