RF Attenuator Old HP 355 vs. JFW rotary

[Jester]

Lot's of these on ebay, is one preferable to the other?

Most of the HP's look long in the tooth, while many of the JFW's look new

[G0HZU]

I'm not sure how many variants there are of the JFW  attenuators but I have a JFW 50DR (rotary) stepped attenuator here that covers 0 to 50dB in 1dB steps.

I think it's rated to 1GHz and there's no way that I would swap it for the HP 355. This JFW attenuator works very well with low VSWR and shows good performance in terms of accuracy and insertion loss over a wide frequency range.

I've also got a couple of really old R&S DPU 50 ohm attenuators here. These are 0 to 140dB in 1dB steps and are rated to 2GHz. But these ancient attenuators are huge and very heavy and clunky to operate! The performance is extremely good. At least as good as the JFW and way ahead of the HP355. But they are just too big and clunky for everyday use. I believe that R&S also produced a 75 ohm variant of this attenuator.

[Jester]

Thanks for your comments, I ordered a JFW