Oscilloscope recommendations

dreamspy · May 1, 2009, 8:40pm

Hi

I’m looking to get some advice on selecting an oscilloscope. If you want to cut straight to the cheese, then you can skip my rambling in the next few paragraphs and go straight to the list of oscilloscopes I’m considering at the bottom of this post. Please give me your thoughts about which one you would prefer.

I’m planning to buy an oscilloscope from ebay.de. This is my first oscilloscope and I will probably mostly be working with audio / analog things. Although working with digital electronics in the future might be an option, but from what I read it’s best to have different devices for digital and analog, is that right? So at the moment I’m mostly looking for an analog oscilloscope, but I’we also heard about some oscilloscope that do both analog and digital but not quite sure if they are something worth looking at. I’m not even sure what it means exactly for an oscilloscope to be digital? Does it only mean that he does digital sampling?

Allot of people recommend Tektronix, but they seem to be rather expensive. I’we also been looking at Hameg and Philips. I’we even been thinking if I should just get a dirt cheap entry level 20Mhz oscilloscope just to begin with.

Regarding the probes, most of those oscilloscope don’t come with probes. I haven’t looked into the price of probes, but I’m wondering if they are a big factor of the price, and does the price I have to spend on probes differ much between oscilloscopes?

Stability and availability for support is a big factor for me since I live in Iceland, where not much local support is available. I’we heard that it can be hard and expensive to calibrate oscilloscopes. But the Philips 3380A oscilloscope is supposed to be autocalibrating (according to the ebay seller). Is ease of calibration something I should consider when buying a scope?

So far I’we found a few oscilloscope at www.ebay.de. Here are some examples

TEKTRONIX

[Tektronix 2465B

This one is supposed to be really good, but might be an overkill for me.

[Tektronix 465B

This one is way cheaper, and older! I’we heard good things about this one, but it’s also said to have allot of internal noise. I’m not really sure though how much that would affect what I’m planning to do.

HAMEG

[Hameg 1005

This one should go cheap. But I’we heard that people don’t recommend Hameg for professional audio work. But still it should be enought for me, I think?

[Hameg 605

Not so sure what the difference is between thisone and the Hameg 1005

PHILIPS

I haven’t heard much about these PHILIPS scopes, but some sources say they are good. Now the 30xx models are straight analog scopes, but the 33xx are combiscopes. Now I’m mainly familiar with analog electronics. And these combiscopes, if I understand correctly, can work both with analog devices, and serve as a digital storage oscilloscope (for working with digital electronics, right?). Would you recommend those combiscopes? Are there any drawbacks in having both these functions in one device? The Philips scopes that I’we been looking at are:

[Philips 3070

This one is purely analog

[Philips 3350A

This one and the next one are combiscopes (analog and digital storage oscillscopes)

[Philips 3380A

The ebay seller talks about auto calibration. Could be usefull since it’s hard to get oscilloscopes calibrated here in Iceland.

OTHER BRANDS

Now here are some scopes from some company’s I don’t know much about. But they seem to be cheap and might fit my needs. I’m not sure about how a memoryscope works though and if I can use it as an analog scope?

[KIKUSUI COS5100

A cheap analog scope

[IWATSU DMS-6430

A memoryscope.

Any suggestions recommended. I might add that I’m also open for other recommendations if you feel something else would suite me better.

Thanks!

qema · June 11, 2009, 3:32pm

I wanted an Oscilloscope for years, my wife insisted that I buy a new simply because it will be under warranty and is going to come calibrated. I regretted spending the extra money right up until the box arrived. But now I’m glad i did, its small, easy to move, easy on the eyes (LCD is so much nicer then the old tube), the recording features have come in useful and finally it works every time (no surprises).

I got the Tek TDS 2022B and id recomand it to anyone http://www.tek.com/products/oscilloscop … 0_tds2000/ (it comes with 2 probes).

Ive used a variety of scopes and Ive really never had problems with any of them but i do find Tek or a HP to be the nicest to work with overall.

Some great info on what to look for:

http://www.picotech.com/applications/os … orial.html

Lastly, if your just getting started get yourself a good soldering iron http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ucts_id=85 is the BEST iron I’ve used, it outperformed my works $300 station AND the tips last 10 times longer then a generic iron. A good iron is by far the best thing you could do for yourself when you first get into electronics work.

SabastianPerez · July 23, 2018, 10:55am

I would recommend You this one https://toolboom.com/en/handheld-digita … utd1025cl/