I'm getting ready to make the leap and buy a new RF signal generator. My 37 year old HP8640B is beginning to show its age. Some of the plastic mechanical parts are beginning to fatigue and break. The fine tune shaft coupling has crumbled and I have no fine frequency adjustment and the one of the band select gears is split and its only a matter of time before it comes apart. Besides that its really large and heavy.

My dilemma is which one of the two I've chosen to buy. I am favoring both the Rigol 821 and the Siglent SSG3021X. I've read many of the reviews available for the Rigol and it appears to be a decent RF generator for the price point and will meet my needs for my hobby radio work. I'm a fan of and very satisfied with Siglent stuff I already own. I have the SSA3021X spectrum analyzer, SDS1202X-E o'scope and SDM3045 DMM. I haven't found very many user reviews on the Siglent SSG3021X RF generator though. But, from what I have read it appears to be very suitable for my purpose as well as the Rigol. One of the factors pushing me toward the Siglent is the ability to expand it to 3.2GHz if it is needed in the future. Which, goes to my major question ..... has anyone been able to hack the firmware to expand the frequency of it? If it can be hacked and expanded then my decision is made. If not, I'm still in the undecided mode which I need to resolve and get an order placed.