Suggestion needed on buying old and used analog scope - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2011, 09:55:05 am
content: Planning to grab used analog scope locally, 2 ch with 50 to 100 Mhz range. Its just for general purpose signal verification for educational purpose.Now the questions :There are a lot of Japanese scope like Hitachi, Trio, Leader and etc, how are these old analog Jap's scope compared to well known scope like HP/Agilent or Tek ?Saw Dave's vidblog episode #196 - Tektronix 2225 and he mentioned the 500mV vert sensitivity, which "other" old Tek scope has this capability ? Reason asking this is because it will be used for low level noise analyzing purposes.Should anyone ever used or knew very well these Japanese old scope, which one did you used and has good low vert sensitivity similar to Tek 2225 ?Any other comments or tips are wellcome especially on buying old used analog scope.Other questions might follow if I have more.Thanks in advance.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 04, 2011, 10:08:47 am
content: The Leader LS1040 has 500µV/DIV, as does the Tek 2211 DSO.I'm not aware of any others, except perhaps some very ancient Tek scopes.But a good scope with 1mV/DIV will do the trick too of course.Pretty much any of the older brand scopes are all excellent.Hitachi, Kikusui, Philips, Trio et.alService/parts wise I'm not sure how they compare. Some of the Tek's can be notoriously hard to repair with many custom parts.Dave.

author: zaoka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2011, 12:05:21 pm
content: Dave, dont forget that old Hameg

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 04, 2011, 12:20:34 pm
content: Quote from: zaoka on October 04, 2011, 12:05:21 pmYes, Hameg make excellent scopes, in Germany of course.Not that commonly available on the markets outside of Europe though I believe, and prices are usually not very low.Dave.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 04, 2011, 06:13:58 pm
content: The Tek 7A22 (7000 series plugin)/5A22N (5000 series plugin)/AM502 (stand-alone TM500 plugin with BNC out) go down to 10uV/div with 1MHz bandwidth. They're also differential, which is very helpful since even tiny amounts of ground loop current can ruin your measurements at those levels. Plus they have selectable low/high-pass filters.

author: Joy at MCS
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2011, 10:59:12 pm
content: Hameg is good but Dave's right even if you found a used one the price wouldn't be very cheap. Kikusui and Leader are all okay products.

author: Conrad Hoffman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2011, 11:16:22 pm
content: I've used the Hitachi, Kik, Leader & Philips in service and design and they're all good scopes. Never liked Philips much, or B&K. What I did see was that the Japanese scopes would eventually fail and be unrepairable for various reasons, whereas the small Tek 5xxx series usually kept on ticking. It seemed like each year of the other scopes needed some subtle revision of circuit board and after a couple years parts and boards were unavailable. CRTs and power supplies failed more often. That said, I wouldn't hesitate to use any of 'em, especially if I could get a parts unit to stash away. As said above, the high gain plug-ins for the Teks can be very useful, so I'd try for a 5xxx or 7xxx mainframe as a first choice. For my daily user I have to admit, I still like the old boat anchor Tek 545B, even though I have other much faster scopes to use when needed.

author: gregariz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2011, 11:30:12 pm
content: Quote from: Conrad Hoffman on October 24, 2011, 11:16:22 pmI originally trained with the Philips... I liked the layout of the scope but there was always something falling off it.Nothing wrong with the 545B.. it'll probably still be alive when we're all dead. I have a 465 somewhere which was the industry standard for many years and do like the simplicity of it also.