[Elecraft] Recomendations on Oscilloscopes

[Howard W. Ashcraft]

Everyone has favorites, but the older Tek analog scopes are very solid and a good deal.  If you have the room, you can get amazing performance/cost from 7000 series scopes.  I have a 7854 (400 mhz plus waveform digitizing) and a 7934 (500 Mhz Analog storage)  7000s run from 100mhz to 1Ghz in bandwidth, and, depending upon the plug-ins chosen, you can do just about anything with a 7000 series.  Their primary drawback is size.  Both of my scopes are on carts because they would take up a big chunk of my bench, otherwise.


Tek also made a very nice series of "portable" scopes.  The 100 Mhz 2246 is very nice and readily available used.  It has the added bonus of "smart cursors" to easily measure amplitude and period/frequency with a single button push, and I have found the triggering to be quite good.  The 2400 series, and particularly the 2465s are also nice pieces of equipment, but are more expensive due to their greater bandwidth.

What you "need" really depends on what you "want" and what you are going to do with it.  The higher bandwidth devices are useful if you need to look at abberations in a signal that may be smoothed out in a lower bandwidth scope, but may be unnecessary if you just want to trace a signal through a circuit and measuring changes in amplitude or phase.  Extra bandwidth is never a bad thing, it just costs more, and may not be necessary.

Now to stir up the controversy, I used to have a Tek 465. This is a venerable 100 Mhz scope, but frankly the 2246s that I have had worked better and were much easier to use.  So, I would recommend a scope more recent than the 465/475 series.  But there are lots of these still out there and are very much liked by some. My one experience repairing a 465 may have colored my view.  

Howard W. Ashcraft, Jr. W1WF



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