Noob direction scoping guitar amp?

[jfharper]

Hi, first post, introduce myself.  I'm 52 years old, have a BA in Biochemistry, minor in Computer Science and earlier this year, I started getting into electronics by building this amp:
Everything went well, it works and sounds killer.  I'd like to learn with a scope I'm waiting to get on Wed, the 1104X-E.

Watching YouTube vids on the scope, a good bit is going past my head, I was wondering what direction one would advise in learning to use the scope with an amp and perhaps other projects, like RF or other electronics projects/fixes.  If someone could point me in a direction, that would be great...if not, no worries.

Forgot to mention, I was looking at the FFT and wondering if tone/freq analysis might be cool to try.  I watched this:

was wondering how/if this scope can handle this for the amp, or am I totally mis-understanding.

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

Start here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/oscilloscope-training-class-(long)/

[Terry Bites]

Autoset!

[rstofer]

Here is a display of a fairly clean 1 kHz square wave.  Note that there is no spike at 0 Hz therefore there is no DC present.
Note the odd harmonics (3 kHz, 5 kHz, etc) which is characteristic of an FFT of a square wave because the square wave is created from the sum of all the odd harmonics at declining amplitude out to infinity (mathematically).

This was done with my Digilent Analog Discovery 2 - look how nicely those odd harmonics jump up at exactly the right frequency!

[rstofer]

As to whether any particular scope can do an FFT, read the User's Manual.  The low end Siglents can as can the Rigol DS1054Z.

Here is an EPIC thread started by a newcomer where we spent a lot of time testing the various functions.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/what-an-oscilloscope-recommended-for-a-woman-passionate-about-electronics/msg3100087/#msg3100087

Charlotte buys a Siglent SDS1202X-E at reply 150 on page 7.  Later in the thread we go through a lot of capability testing.  I didn't know that a scope could calculate the definite integral of sin(x) over x=0 to pi and display the numeric results on a screen as well as a trace of the integral itself.  This is AMAZING!

See reply 816 in that mega-thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/what-an-oscilloscope-recommended-for-a-woman-passionate-about-electronics/msg3299294/#msg3299294

[Old Printer]

If you can find a cheap used analog scope it will make a great tool for tracing a signal through a guitar amp (tube). Lots of high voltages in there that requite a good deal of care to keep your scope (and you) safe. I am talking about a $50ish low bandwidth very basic scope from a hamfest or something like that that does not require shipping $$. More disposable that your spiffy new digital. Since most any old analog scope is going to require some maintenance, as a second scope it is a good place to learn. If you go this route make sure a serious service manual is available as it will be needed.