🚀 go-pugleaf

As the EE Shop for the Universities engineering college, we periodically have
to advise on buying scopes, sometimes a whole student lab full (12 per lab).
So we keep our eyes open for good values and what we hope will be less expen-
sive brands: Leader, Hitachi, etc.  We've seen some nice stuff from all these
places, and we do have some nice inexpensive Hitachis we like, though I wish
they were a bit brighter in the trace.
But...we've just been getting deals from Tektronix that are hard to pass up.
They really aren't the high priced alternative anymore, they make a number of
lower-end scopes whose prices were as good or better than equivalent stuff
from other manufacturers.  And since we have to repair all of these widgets,
the fact that the Tek scopes are well made and have superb technical documen-
tation is crucial.  (Yes, I've worked on some older Tek scopes that were a
stinking nightmare to service.  They've improved.)  They certainly aren't
resting on their laurels...
  Of course, HP makes some mind-boggling scopes with DC-to-blue-light response
and stuff like that - along with a price that would buy you a small house
in this city.  But when you get into that realm, I've found there are times
when something as simple as a bad BNC connector could not be repaired by our
shop because it was so buried in heavily shielded construction, and because
it seems like a lot of HP stuff assumes that there's no way a lowly electronics
tech in a service shop is going to be able to fix it, so they've stopped being
so detailed in their tech literature.  The alternative is to send it back to
HP, where they charge some truly breathtaking flat repair fees regardless
of the problem.  But if you can afford one of these scopes, I imagine you
can afford the repair fees...
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paul marxhausen                              \/               grace 
university of nebraska - lincoln             /\              happens           
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