I have today Feeltech FY3200S 20MHz and am dissatisfied with:
Hi I have FY6800 60Mhz It has all the same bugs .. the internal PSU all have a problem.
ie bad earth & pore quality ..
The Jitter is the same .. only the box and some minor software update.
If you read though other posts . there are a lot of upgrades ie PSU etc.
If you are unhappy with what you have the new faster version has some good features
value for money .. that's properly yes Get what you pay for ..
.. It all depends on what you want to use it for . Just home hobby its ok .
But if you are going to lash out I would go for maybe a good second hand profession one.
I myself and many others in this forum have done many upgrades to make these FY's work well.
Its a hard to recommend something that has known bugs .. You will have to do a lot of home work.
personally when my FY6800 dies I would not get another one .
Have funny & good luck .
Make your self a Pros & cons list . and read some of the earlier Posts this will guide You to a decision.
You should also read this link from JBG .
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/feeltech-fy6600-60mhz-2-ch-vco-function-arbitrary-waveform-signal-generator/msg2475843/#msg2475843
You'd better take a look at a later posting I made on this subject here:-
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/feeltech-fy6600-60mhz-2-ch-vco-function-arbitrary-waveform-signal-generator/msg2477619/#msg2477619 It turns out that the manuals for the 6600, the 6800 and the 6900 all perpetrate the same frequency versus p-p voltage limit error. All three can generate a full 20v p-p (High impedance loads) up to the 20MHz frequency limit for sine and square waves before plummeting to the 5v p-p limit.
I've since come to the conclusion that, aside from that horrible earthing bodge that destroyed whatever ground return integrity there was in that 6 wire ribbon cable linking the PSU to the main board, the 6900 model is actually an improvement over its predecessors - they still use those ("We bought a million of these bastard THS3002i opamps and we won't be getting rid of them until every last one has been used up in our function generator product line") but now they've doubled them up to reduce distortion at the 20MHz 20v p-p limit. It's an improvement at the extreme limit but it still falls a little short of what could be achieved with just a single THS3491 per channel in the FY6600 and FY6800 upgrades.
If I was still in the market for yet another cheap Chinese AWG, I'd be going for an FY6900 and a 4.7K half watt resistor ready to be inserted into a new grounding wire link from the C14's PE tag to the ground rail of the main board, plus a fan to fill the hole in the rear panel.
As things stand, after running my never ending modification project, code named FY6600, for a little over 18 months, I'm now more than prepared to invest in an SDG1032X (hackable to a 1062X) for a mere 278 quid without discount. After all of my time spent in the purgatory of improving this toy AWG, I feel I'm long overdue some light relief.
Back in November 2018 when I'd been looking for a signal generator to complement my recent 365 quid 'scope purchase (an SDS1202X-E), the original 360 quid asking price of the SDG1032X had seemed so out of proportion to what I'd just spent on the 'scope, that the sub 76 quid asking price of an FY6600-60M with double the frequency range looked a very good alternative... on paper at least. Of course, I've now developed a new sense of respect for the more subtle distinctions between these two products.
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[EDIT 2020-10-26]
Now that I've had experience of both of the SDG1032X (returned as "Unfit for purpose" due to a horribly jittery internal clock oscillator fault) and the SDG2042X bought to replace it in the hope of being able to finally retire my much abused FY6600, I can tell you that I now have a new found respect for Feeltech's design efforts (but
not the inexcusable bean counter led stupidity that did dollars worth of damage for the sake of a cent or two's worth of cost savings, nor for their
non-existent "After sales customer support").
It might come as a shock but the UI on these feeltech AWGs is miles better than the user hostile UI that Siglent have inflicted upon
all of their AWG product line. The most user hostile effect I see with the FY6600 model are simply those horrible plastic dimples used to actuate the real, if variable quality, soldered on PCB mount switches - at least it's possible to replace any faulty or hard to operate switches.
The most user hostile and counter-productive aspect of Siglent's UI is the frequency setting interface where the keypad entry is limited to a maximum of 11 digits, the last three of which then get stamped on by the chosen multiplier, causing the
displayed reading to be rounded to the nearest 8 digit value even though the full 11 digit entry does get used to set the frequency.
If you want to make a fine adjustment via the rotary encoder and digit select cursor as per the FY's only method, you're limited to just 8 digits and always have to shift the cursor to the desired digit, unlike the FY's "sticky digit select" which can be anyone of the full 14 digit's worth of resolution available to the FY series.
The 1uHz resolution in the SDGs only applies to a maximum of 100KHz and that's when using the clunky keypad entry method. Unlike the FYs where you can fine tune a 1uHz offset over the full range DC to 100MHz, Siglent's 1uHz resolution is limited and reduces as you select MHz and then tens of MHz frequency settings. Despite the lack of a keypad (more likely because it lacks a keypad), Feeltech had managed to create a frequency setting interface that is a positive joy to use by comparison to that of the SDG models.
Then we come to the rest of the menu driven UI unfriendliness of Siglent's (not so) finest which I won't bore you with other than to say, "It's no Beauty Queen". This is one area that could definitely benefit from the expertise of an industrial designer of UIs rather than some software hack looking to the other equally horrible efforts of their perceived competition (Rigol and the A brand product lines).
The staggeringly (in hindsight now) uncritical praise by reviewers such as Dave Jones and that guy that did the tear down of that famous 1,3 million dollar Keysight 113GHz BW 'scope must surely have been down to their limited experience with only A brand (and Rigol) kit to compare against the Siglent gear they've reviewed.
Mind you, I thought Dave had reviewed at least one of the more recent FY66/6800 AWG models? Perhaps I'm thinking of a Defpom review (but even he failed to say "Phewey! This UI sure does stink!" when he reviewed the SDG1032X). Perhaps they were so hung up over the performance specifications, they neglected to pay any mind to what I now see with the benefit of my FY6600 experience as glaring deficiencies in the UIs of T&M kit in general (apparently, Siglent are better than most in the UI department
).
In the light of my experience with the FY6600, it would seem that all these highly regarded reviewers have (undoubtedly unwittingly) done a great disservice to their Youtube audience by not offering scathing criticism of the UI quality of this class of T&M kit (DSOs seem to have attracted the cream of the software talent available within each manufacturer's pool of such developer talent, leaving the function generator departments having to make do with the dregs).
My remarks following this edit insert still apply despite Labrat101's findings with his own FY6800's fake/clone Cyclone FPGA IC. In his case, I think the problems he's discovered are more to do with having the bad luck to receive an FY6800 with a faulty clone FPGA rather than just the fact that it used a clone FPGA.
I don't believe that Feeltech had decided out of the blue to start using cheap clone Cyclone chips with the introduction of the FY6800 (BICBW) when it seems more likely that this had all started with the very first FY6600 models. With the benefit of Labrat101's findings, it just means you now have some more tests to perform to make sure a new FY6800 or (on topic in this thread) FY6900 is free of these and previously discovered defects before risking all by modifying the (bean counter instigated) crap out of it and invalidating its nice shiny Chinese waranty.
[END EDIT]
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For any cash strapped hobbyist, the FY6900 makes an excellent first AWG choice. It stands head and shoulders above its peers (other cheap Chinese toy signal generators). Indeed, this had also been the case for the 6600 and 6800 models which it supersedes.
By "cash strapped hobbyist", I mean someone with at least the basic skills to wire a 4.7K resistor between the PE tag of the C14 socket and a convenient connection point on the ground rail of the main board, along with the ability to at least undo the vandalism to the ground return wire in the 6 wire ribbon cable between the PSU and main circuit board and fit a 40mm square 12v fan into the unpopulated fan aperture in the rear panel and connect it to the 5v rail to quietly reduce the internal temperature to less insanely high levels.
There, I've just pointed out the three cheapest and highest priority (most essential) modifications that any "cash strapped hobbyist" should do to protect their modest investment.
There's no need to thank me for this sage advice (a simple click on the "Say thanks" button will more than suffice if you insist).
JBG