I was looking for an oscilloscope, and I got good offers of Tektronix 2445 and HP 54600B oscilloscopes at well below their (rather ridiculous) eBay prices. Which of them would be a better choice, as their price would be approximately similar?
HP 54600B is a digital oscilloscope, and overall a more modern design, but its sampling rate of 20 MSa/s makes me doubt it a bit. Tektronix 2445 is a good analog oscilloscope, but is being analog so large limitation that I would be better off with the HP?
I do mostly audio stuff, but occasionally some simple microcontroller stuff such as AVRs and so on (though I haven't yet needed to use an oscilloscope to debug them).
HP 54600B is a digital oscilloscope, and overall a more modern design, but its sampling rate of 20 MSa/s makes me doubt it a bit. Tektronix 2445 is a good analog oscilloscope, but is being analog so large limitation that I would be better off with the HP?
I do mostly audio stuff, but occasionally some simple microcontroller stuff such as AVRs and so on (though I haven't yet needed to use an oscilloscope to debug them).
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Well you dont have a choice if you like playing Tetris:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKs1Iz-TRi4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKs1Iz-TRi4
The HP 54600 is a very early digital scope-they are difficult to use, somewhat inaccurate, and just not suited to doing audio work. The 20 Mega samples/sec is a joke by today's standards, my 4-year-old digital scope has 2.5 GIGA samples/sec, well over 100X the sampling rate of the 54600. Also consider that the 2445's bandwidth is 150MHz, and has four channels. (Although channels 3 and 4 are crippled, only offering two vertical scales)
I have both a 2445 and a 2465 (2465 is the 300MHz version of the 2445) and I love them. They are great scopes. Definitely go with the 2445, but make sure everything works well, no missing parts, etc. Also, there is a huge support system for this era of Tek scopes. The 2445 was almost the top-of-the-line model when it was new, and the HP was built in a time when manufacturers were just "getting their feet wet" trying to figure out how to make digital scopes work well.
EDIT 2: I didn't see that you do some digital stuff. The 2445 should work pretty well unless you're trying to find small glitches that don't occur frequently. You may want to at least consider looking at a lower-end NEW digital scope, such as the Rigol DS1102E (2 ch, 100MHz, 1Giga sample/sec, 5.7 inch color screen), the Rigol DS1054Z (4ch, 50MHz, 1 Giga sample/sec, 7 inch color screen) or similar; these can be had for $300-$400 NEW. I've never either of these myself, but I know plenty of people who love them. My friends who have these scopes don't do much audio stuff though.
EDIT 3: Sorry about the continuing edits. Do you know the person that is selling these scopes? Or can you check them out before you buy them? It may be a good idea, if you can, to play with them first and take a few pics of them. If you can get some good pictures of them it may be easy to see if there are any problems with the scopes.
I have both a 2445 and a 2465 (2465 is the 300MHz version of the 2445) and I love them. They are great scopes. Definitely go with the 2445, but make sure everything works well, no missing parts, etc. Also, there is a huge support system for this era of Tek scopes. The 2445 was almost the top-of-the-line model when it was new, and the HP was built in a time when manufacturers were just "getting their feet wet" trying to figure out how to make digital scopes work well.
EDIT 2: I didn't see that you do some digital stuff. The 2445 should work pretty well unless you're trying to find small glitches that don't occur frequently. You may want to at least consider looking at a lower-end NEW digital scope, such as the Rigol DS1102E (2 ch, 100MHz, 1Giga sample/sec, 5.7 inch color screen), the Rigol DS1054Z (4ch, 50MHz, 1 Giga sample/sec, 7 inch color screen) or similar; these can be had for $300-$400 NEW. I've never either of these myself, but I know plenty of people who love them. My friends who have these scopes don't do much audio stuff though.
EDIT 3: Sorry about the continuing edits. Do you know the person that is selling these scopes? Or can you check them out before you buy them? It may be a good idea, if you can, to play with them first and take a few pics of them. If you can get some good pictures of them it may be easy to see if there are any problems with the scopes.
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I know that Rigol's low-end scopes are relatively cheap, but I don't currently feel like forking out 300-400 euros for one (I'm talking about less than 100 euros for the 2445 or 54600B..)
I know the guy who is selling the 54600B, but not the guy who is selling the 2445. Anyways, I'm going to pick up the scope personally, so I can take a look at it, and probably do some small tests with a signal generator to see that it works.
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I don't blame you, 300-400 euros is a lot of money, especially considering you have two available to you for 100 euros.
I don't know how you're doing financially, but have you considered buying both scopes? 100 euros for the 2445 is a complete steal, and 100 for the 54600 is a little high, but reasonable.
I also forgot to ask-are scope probes included with either deal? You can buy cheap probes for $20 or so a piece, but if Tek, Agilent, HP, or LeCroy probes are included in one of the offers, that may be an important consideration too. "Brand name" probes always seem to work better & inspire more confidence (at least to me, that is) than using the cheap $20 ones.
All in all though, I'd choose the 2445 if you only want to buy one.
If you were doing mostly digital work, then I would say go with the HP. Otherwise, it's not a great scope, very antiquated low resolution digital (only 6-bit vertical resolution IIRC). It's great for capturing digital waveforms but it doesn't do much else well. As such the Tek 2445 is a much better scope for your needs.
As for the Rigol's discussed before avoid the DS1052E/DS1102E series, these are very long in the tooth and not really a good value any longer. I would avoid them if at all possible. The DS1054Z on the other hand, is by far one of the best values for new equipment that you can get. It is hackable to enable all of the features and increase the bandwidth up to 100MHz. With a hacked DS1054Z, you get a scope that is ten times the scope the Tek 2445 is. The Rigol has Digital Phosphor capability (also called Intensity Grading or a variety of other names) just like the modern Tek DSOs. Deep memory (24Mpts), an insane number of triggering options that are useful in both analog and digital work, serial decoding on the fly (plus triggering off of serial decode) etc.
You might see that htere was an issue a while back with trigger jitter on the DS1054Z. This issue was was traced down to improper coefficients on a phase-locked loop generator. The PLL wasn't locking properly causing the seen jitter. This has been fixed in a recent firmware upgrade, which flashed new coefficients to the PLL. As such, the issue is considered solved.
As for the Rigol's discussed before avoid the DS1052E/DS1102E series, these are very long in the tooth and not really a good value any longer. I would avoid them if at all possible. The DS1054Z on the other hand, is by far one of the best values for new equipment that you can get. It is hackable to enable all of the features and increase the bandwidth up to 100MHz. With a hacked DS1054Z, you get a scope that is ten times the scope the Tek 2445 is. The Rigol has Digital Phosphor capability (also called Intensity Grading or a variety of other names) just like the modern Tek DSOs. Deep memory (24Mpts), an insane number of triggering options that are useful in both analog and digital work, serial decoding on the fly (plus triggering off of serial decode) etc.
You might see that htere was an issue a while back with trigger jitter on the DS1054Z. This issue was was traced down to improper coefficients on a phase-locked loop generator. The PLL wasn't locking properly causing the seen jitter. This has been fixed in a recent firmware upgrade, which flashed new coefficients to the PLL. As such, the issue is considered solved.
While I agree that the DS1054Z is definitely a great bang-for-the-buck scope, I still find myself using my 2445 or 2465 when doing a lot of audio work.
Also, consider this: my main scopes are a Tek MSO4054 (500MHz, 2.5Gs/s, 4+16 ch) and an Agilent DSOX2024A (200MHz, 2Gs/s, 4ch) that I use for the bulk of my work. I don't mention this to tout the cool gear I own, but to illustrate the fact that even though they're nearly 30 years old, the 2445/2465 can give me information I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
I suppose I could buy both of them, but I'd prefer to get just one scope, as my apartment isn't that big and I already have too much stuff.
Also, 200 euros starts to be close to the price of a new Rigol.Anyways, both of them come with two probes. So I think I'll go with the 2445.
I suppose I could buy both of them, but I'd prefer to get just one scope, as my apartment isn't that big and I already have too much stuff.
Anyways, both of them come with two probes. So I think I'll go with the 2445.
Good decision! Let us know if you have any questions or problems.
I suppose I could buy both of them, but I'd prefer to get just one scope, as my apartment isn't that big and I already have too much stuff.
Well, in that case maybe the Rigol DS1054Z is worth considering after all.
OK, it's more than € 200, but not even double that amount. But for that money, the performance is far better than you'd expect. I have a DS1074Z-S (basically the same scope with waveform generator) which is capable of some nice things, even an eye pattern looks pretty good.
Another plus if space is at a premium: on a photo that scope looks bigger than it actually is, yet the screen has a very usable size.
200 euros was the price for both Tek and HP scopes, and as I said, that wouldn't be worth it. Just the Tek is under 100 euros. The Rigol scope seems to be almost four times that price in Europe, so I guess the 2445 will be good enough considering the price.
Yeah, I have liked it. It has been nice to use, and it's probably better than the HP, too.
Btw, do you know if this some sort of "preventive maintenance", such as changing electrolytics is recommended for this model?
In general, changing the PSU filter caps is good advice for all equipment of this agree.Yeah, I have liked it. It has been nice to use, and it's probably better than the HP, too.
Btw, do you know if this some sort of "preventive maintenance", such as changing electrolytics is recommended for this model?
Still not as bad as the Tek TDS series though, which have caps that love to take a **** all over the board, eating traces and shorting lines out all over the place.
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