Sampling heads

[cmjones01]

Test equipment fans,

Does anyone have any suggestions for easily available, affordable sampling heads to experiment with? Or indeed any going spare? I ask because I'm getting a Soviet oscilloscope sampling system working (see separate thread recently) and I have the Я4С-101 timebase and Я4С-100 Y amplifiers working but am missing the actual sampling head itself. Original sampling heads ('stroboscopic mixer' or смеситель стробоскопический) are as rare as unicorn fur.

I have Tektronix SD-24 and SD-22 sampling heads which I use with my CSA803A scope, but they're a bit too precious to mess about with, and the pinout of their connector doesn't seem to be documented anywhere that I can find.

Something like the Tektronix S-4 would be a good start, but did any other manufacturers produce anything similar, perhaps less sought-after? I don't care about the brand name but a risetime of <100ps would be nice.

One wrinkle is that the connection to the sampling head only has +/-15V available, so anything involving avalanche transistors is a bit tricky.

I attach a picture of the original sampling heads just for entertainment value.

Chris

[David Hess]

The Tektronix S-1 and S-2 sampling heads are mostly through hole construction without any ICs or hybrids so they are a good place to start.

[cmjones01]

The S-2, especially, looks promising, thank you. I'll keep a look out for one.

Chris