Electronics > Beginners

Beginners Function Generator / Signal Generator?

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cincin:
I'm looking into buying my first function generator, and I have no idea what to get.

My needs are very simple, I think. I'm a beginner at electronics repairs, I'm mostly working on vintage synthesizers, guitar amps, drum machines, audio effect units, right now; but I'm interested in learning more about it all and expanding my skills.

What I need out of a function generator at the moment is simply a clean signal that I can then trace around audio circuits to find the source of noise, distortion, etc. I don't yet know why I might later need a 100Mhz signal, or an am/fm modulated signal, or a really strong amplitude.

So a little guidance would be appreciated.

In my shopping so far I've found:

- A used 1987 Dick Smith Function Generator $40cad
10 Hz to 170kHz in three ranges
2 .5 volts peak 10 peak
amplitude stability of .1 dB
Sine, square, and triangle wave forms

- A new KKMoon Chinese AliExpress special $140
Comes in 20Mhz, 60Mhz, and 100Mhz, which one?
Specs here: https://rb.gy/iriuxe

I'm trying to do this on the cheap, but not if I will invariably have to buy again later.

Any advice for a signal noob?

james_s:
For the needs you mention, one of the many different brands of analog function generators from the 70s-80s would probably serve you well. I haven't looked lately but it used to be easy to find them for around $50 or less. BK Precision, Protek, HP, etc, loads of different companies made them, most had similar capabilities.

If you want to spend a bit more and don't mind Chinese stuff, I've heard good things about the FY6900.

MathWizard:
Hi there, if you aren't too concerned about nice perfect sine/triangle/square waves, and are just doing low power audio signal tracing, I'd have no problem using 1 of the $15-20 sig. gen's on ebay. They use chips like the IC8038.

Even if you only had 1 of the $15-20 oscilloscopes to go with it, someone could find a lot of audio circuit problems with the 2 of them. Maybe they would not be great at really seeing what op-amps are doing, but as small pocket sized tools, they would do great in a jam.

The sig.gen can be used as a driver to get all kinds of power levels. They work pretty good up to 50-100kHz, but my goes up to 1MHz iirc. I don't know how "digital" they are inside, but they have a lot of steps from Vmin to Vmax. I should look at mine on my real scope, and compare it to my real sig.gen.

I have both above mini-scope and mini-sig. gen., if they weren't so fiddly, I'd probably using them more often, like a DMM.

But yeah if you have a few more dollars, something non-pocket sized might be better.

BillyO:
I recently picked up a BK Precision 3010 function generator for only $35 CDN.  Works a charm.  0.1 Hz to 1 MHz, sine, square and triangle waveforms.  Adjustable offset and both TTL and variable level outputs.  Nice true isolation via a linear power supply.  Simple to operate and no funky noise or stray voltages caused by SMPS. :-+

themadhippy:

--- Quote ---They use chips like the IC8038.
--- End quote ---
Like being the operative word,there sorta close,but not the genuine thing.The genuine 8038 does a pretty good job,at least the one ive been using for a number of years does .Might be worth trying to get a peek inside the tricky dicky unit to see if its using one,if you dont use its a signal generator you could repurpose it in an fx pedal

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