WANDEL & GOLTERMANN NFA-1 Audio Analyzer

[andymouse]

Hi all,
This is not a "should I buy ?" question so please don't panic ! I merely want a feel for this company as I haven't heard of them before, so do they have a good reputation? and what are there instruments like in general, do they age well? are they popular amongst the EE community? the unit in the title of this post for instance has a few fix entries in the forum but if possible I would like the opinion of an EE ?I am interested in the Audio range and have seen one on offer as working for 500 quid, don't touch it with a barge pole or pay for it now ! at this point in time any thoughts on this would be gratefully received.

Andy.

[Messtechniker]

W&G is in my opinion in the same league as R&S.

[Roehrenonkel]

Hi andymouse,
 
W&G used to make instruments for the Bundespost (former Telekom) and military,
so you can expect the best of "Made in Germany". :-)
 
Post some pictures

[Arts]

Good grief, and I thought my R&S was huge

W&G made extremely good equipment. But, aside from size (just how much real estate can you spare on your bench?) do consider the following:

Age

Complexity

Availability of Manuals, service and operating?

Availability of replacement parts, especially weird and wonderful custom or no longer available semiconductors that don't cross to anything.

[srb1954]

Hi all,
This is not a "should I buy ?" question so please don't panic ! I merely want a feel for this company as I haven't heard of them before, so do they have a good reputation? and what are there instruments like in general, do they age well? are they popular amongst the EE community? the unit in the title of this post for instance has a few fix entries in the forum but if possible I would like the opinion of an EE ?I am interested in the Audio range and have seen one on offer as working for 500 quid, don't touch it with a barge pole or pay for it now ! at this point in time any thoughts on this would be gratefully received.

Andy.

Wandel & Goltermann make very high quality equipment and I would consider their gear to be superior in many ways to HP gear of the same vintage. Their gear is very, very solidly built, almost military quality.  It is often also quite complex and challenging to service.

Before buying an item like this I would carefully check the availability of documentation, which I usually find is quite difficult to source. Due to the complexity of this gear it will likely require service at some time and, without good service documentation, you might end up being unable to repair it. In that case you would become the owner of a very solid, beautifully built boat anchor.

[Sighound36]

Very sound advice srb1954, I owned one of these a few years ago and I can attest to the build quality and fuctionality first rate.
However servicing & location of rocking horse dropping parts and the fact it was in use every day. Hence the switch to a UPV66 & APx555B.

They are a few of the early HP audio analysers around for sensible outlay and these are home serviciable from memory.

[Arts]

Just a thought Andy; If you can run to 500 quid for a machine like the W&G, why not consider something like a brand new Quant Asylum unit? I have no affiliation with the company, but I do know people who use them, and they are extremely happy. I gotta say, if I didn't already have my R&S and (3) Amber 3501's this is the direction I would be going in.

Small size, great specs, programmable testing, no software licences (download the software onto as many machines as you want and just bring the unit wherever you need), runs on your laptop or PC.

https://quantasylum.com/collections/frontpage/products/qa403-audio-analyzer

[Sighound36]

Another left field reply, what about a Picoscope 4262 its very useful and accurate as well. I have a couple of these around the lab.

https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/4262/picoscope-4262-overview

[wn1fju]

I have a few W&G pieces (signal generators, selective level receivers) and concur with the posts above.  The build quality is superb, the insides look like pieces of art.  However, documentation is problematic.  Free downloads are sparse, but I was able to source a few (paid) manuals from manual dealers.  Even so, some of the manuals are in German, which for an English-only speaking American like me, is a bit problematic.

Having said this, their equipment is not immune to failure.  I've had to repair power supplies, replace tantalum capacitors, find a few faulty CMOS 4000 chips. The usual stuff and no worse than what one would get with vintage pieces from HP, Tektronix, etc.