Products > Test Equipment
Questions on some older used Scopes and Probe Rec's
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Fulmir:

--- Quote from: G0HZU on July 07, 2022, 09:10:49 pm ---Maybe try haggling for a good deal on one of the 100MHz Siglent scopes (and hack it?) and this would then mean you could search in slow time for one of the old 500MHz+ classics from HPAK or Lecroy for a very low price. Patience may be the key here.

--- End quote ---

Part of the reason I wasn't that interested in those is lack of growth room and the relatively tiny screen. It looks like their more mid-range stuff (which is also hackable...  ;) ) fixes the screen and features issues.

I can afford it, I just didn't want to pay that much if it wasn't worth it. The fine folks here (plus a few IRL friends) have convinced me that it probably is worth it in terms of features and time not spent "setting up" a used scope. Seriously Siglent and the rest should pay some of you all commissions  ;D
nctnico:
Let me throw my commision out of the window then: seriously consider other brands as well. I have spend several k euro on Siglent equipment only to find out it didn't perform when the pedal needed to hit the metal. If you have the budget then be sure to look at higher priced stuff from Keysight, R&S, Tektronix, Yokogawa, etc. For starters; you'll find much more polished user interfaces based on decades of experience making test equipment.
tautech:

--- Quote from: Fulmir on July 07, 2022, 09:22:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: G0HZU on July 07, 2022, 09:10:49 pm ---Maybe try haggling for a good deal on one of the 100MHz Siglent scopes (and hack it?) and this would then mean you could search in slow time for one of the old 500MHz+ classics from HPAK or Lecroy for a very low price. Patience may be the key here.

--- End quote ---

Part of the reason I wasn't that interested in those is lack of growth room and the relatively tiny screen. It looks like their more mid-range stuff (which is also hackable...  ;) ) fixes the screen and features issues.

--- End quote ---
That's not the issue you might think it is if you have a PC on the bench to take advantage of these scopes inbuilt webserver.
How large did you say you'd like the screen to be Sir ?
Maybe 48" ?  :)
Below back in 2014 was the first I'd seen.



BTW, that was a SDS3000 DSO and a model we never saw in the west other than in LeCroy colors and even the updated 3000X was a LeCroy in the west too.
G0HZU:
One other thing that I like about the 54825A is that it uses an old school front end using relay switched attenuators. This is a bit clunky but it does mean that the scope achieves a low trace noise on the most sensitive settings. A typical scope like this might have an impedance converter + preamp with a wideband noise floor of about 5nV/sqrtHz. So my scope should achieve a trace noise of 5nV x sqrt(500e6Hz) = 110uV rms on the lowest settings. It actually manages about 90uV.

This is a lot cleaner than some budget scopes. A lot depends on the way the scope front end is designed. I watched some of Dave's teardowns a while back and it's fairly easy to spot the scopes that will be very noisy just by looking at the way the front end is designed. Looking at the images in the teardown the Rigol 7000 scopes look to be quite poor here and I guess the same applies for the cheaper 5000 series. The low budget portable Tek scopes are similar. This would prevent me from buying a scope like this because the higher trace noise on the sensitive ranges would bug me.

I'm not sure how Siglent design the front end but I've read that they do have much lower noise on the most sensitive ranges compared to the Rigol scopes for example.

bdunham7:

--- Quote from: Fulmir on July 07, 2022, 09:22:42 pm ---Part of the reason I wasn't that interested in those is lack of growth room and the relatively tiny screen. It looks like their more mid-range stuff (which is also hackable...  ;) ) fixes the screen and features issues.

--- End quote ---

If you don't have any experience with DSOs the $500 Siglent will have you 'growing' into it for some time before you figure out the bulk of what it can do.  And with the WiFi you can use the webserver for a large picture if you like, as well as hands-off operation of the scope.  200MHz is not a big limitation if you are only using 'normal' probes. 

If you aren't actually restricted to a budget of $500, the next-up Siglent SDS2104X+ with the logic probe set is a pretty good setup and you'll be growing into that for years. 
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