Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

Check out this cute adapter:
_JMP3402.jpg
_JMP3400.jpg
Pretty handy when measuring from a parallel output.
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Wnively321
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by Wnively321 »

Good evening
I have been looking at scope and i was wondering if a siglent 1202x-e would be what I’m looking for to work on my amps with?
Can it handle the dc voltage of a tube amp ?

Thanks
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

Wnively321 wrote:
Sat 12/29/18 4:46 pm
Good evening
I have been looking at scope and i was wondering if a siglent 1202x-e would be what I’m looking for to work on my amps with?
Can it handle the dc voltage of a tube amp ?

Thanks
That's a nice scope, personally I'm using the 1104x-e and it's great. Either one is fine.

The answer is yes and no regarding voltage. It depends on what amp you're working on, some go well above the input voltage (400Vpk @ 1Mohm), BUT, that's not how you're supposed to do it anyway.

What you want is to buy high voltage probes and/or a high voltage differential probe to handle high voltages. I'm using a B&K Precision PR2000B probe for high voltage concerns, and that goes up to to 2000 Volts at 100X.

My default probes are Pico TA131 I got on ebay new, at really good prices (about $12 each). The TA131 can handle 600V at 10:1 but only 200V at 1:1, so it's important to pay attention to that switch if you're using 10/1 switchable or other switchable probes. These probes are fine for 18 watters, but other amps can obviously be higher than the 600V. These probes are also much higher quality than what comes with the scopes.

Thanks,
Josh
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by Wnively321 »

, that’s kind of what I had figured that I needed a Voltage probe
Thank you for the information, i just wanted to make sure I was getting a decent scope .
Amazon has them for 359
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

I've been using a Tektronix 453 scope and I'm thinking of upgrading to a digital one. Any reason a Siglent SDS1052DL would not be a good choice? They're available new for $260. I was also considering the Rigol DS1052E which are available for $300. I'm going for spending as little as possible while being sufficient for amp stuff.

2 channels should be enough?
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

crgfrench wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 1:53 pm
I've been using a Tektronix 453 scope and I'm thinking of upgrading to a digital one. Any reason a Siglent SDS1052DL would not be a good choice? They're available new for $260. I was also considering the Rigol DS1052E which are available for $300. I'm going for spending as little as possible while being sufficient for amp stuff.

2 channels should be enough?
What makes you want to switch to digital? That's the first question.

Some of the benefits of switching to digital are reliant on speed, memory, and sampling rates (or connectivity options, etc...). The Siglent 1202X-E has a lot more memory and usefulness compared to those two models, and is very close in price. I would bet it's faster too.

I tried to go based on price originally, and bought a cheapish/very popular Rigol. I almost instantly regretted that, but I've been very happy with my SDS1104X-E since.
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

1) I'd like better deflection without having to cascade the channels, for one thing (for detecting outer foil ends of caps etc).
2) Also my old Tek hasn't been calibrated in about 40 years, and calibration is half the cost of a new digital scope.
3) Finally I like the idea of exporting data to my Mac.
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

crgfrench wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 5:46 pm
1) I'd like better deflection without having to cascade the channels, for one thing (for detecting outer foil ends of caps etc).
2) Also my old Tek hasn't been calibrated in about 40 years, and calibration is half the cost of a new digital scope.
3) Finally I like the idea of exporting data to my Mac.
1- How would you go about this? I'd like to try it out. It's been a LONG time since I read about foil detection (partly because I don't believe there's an audible difference, but the technical idea interests me).

2- good point.

3- You should strongly consider the SDS1104X-E. It is more expensive, but it's worth it. If you're using a Mac, then you'd certainly appreciate the built in web console. It's fast, and you can make it full screen, and export data directly onto your Mac. The web console works much faster than any of the other remote apps or web interfaces I've tried...and there's some videos on youtube showing the speed difference compared to the Rigols. It's significant.

I enjoy using my scope on a 24 or 32 inch screen. It's pretty awesome.

The SDS1104X-E and the SDS1202X-E both have USB ports, so flash drives are always an option to do that with, but not as fun. I use a 32GB flash drive in mine, and it works perfectly fine.
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

JMPGuitars wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 6:34 pm
How would you go about this? I'd like to try it out.
I followed these instructions:
https://youtu.be/BnR_DLd1PDI
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

crgfrench wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 8:49 pm
I followed these instructions:
https://youtu.be/BnR_DLd1PDI
Thanks! I love his videos. He has a great way of explaining and demonstrating things. I'm gonna do this from now on just as an excuse to play with the scope more. ;)
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

Here's a film cap test:
SDS00159.png
SDS00160.png

Clearly that test does something. ;)
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

JMPGuitars wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 6:34 pm
You should strongly consider the SDS1104X-E. It is more expensive, but it's worth it. If you're using a Mac, then you'd certainly appreciate the built in web console.
Ahh that is very cool -- the scope is wifi-enabled and acts as a server! I wish they offered this embedded web console feature on their 2-channel scopes, I don't need 4. But I'm very tempted...
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

crgfrench wrote:
Fri 05/08/20 10:38 am
JMPGuitars wrote:
Wed 05/06/20 6:34 pm
You should strongly consider the SDS1104X-E. It is more expensive, but it's worth it. If you're using a Mac, then you'd certainly appreciate the built in web console.
Ahh that is very cool -- the scope is wifi-enabled and acts as a server! I wish they offered this embedded web console feature on their 2-channel scopes, I don't need 4. But I'm very tempted...
Not needing 4 channels doesn't make you allergic. Here's something to consider. Most scopes (especially budget ones) that have 1 GSa/s sampling, split the sampling rate when using multiple channels. So on a 2 channel scope, you're getting 500 MSa/s per channel. On the 1104X-E 4 channel scope, it's 1 GSa/s per each pair of channels. You would use channels 1 and 3, and still get 1 GSa/s running both channels.

The scope isn't automatically wifi enabled. You need to get a dongle. I bought one for $9, then hacked the scope for options including 200Mhz, WiFi, and other stuff. Hacking to 200Mhz is a little silly, since I normally leave the 20Mhz limit on to reduce noise (and since that's all well above what we normally need in audio). The WiFi thing was mostly for my entertainment, I generally use the ethernet port.

And then there's the obvious benefit of having the extra 2 channels if you ever found an excuse to use them. ;)
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

Here's another reason having a decent digital scope helps. I was testing a .0047uF cap, and it was too sensitive for 2mV/Div, so I had to go to 5mV/Div, and it was much harder to tell the difference. Having the "Measure" button gave me the option to make it very obvious:
SDS00187.png
SDS00188.png
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

On the other hand, I had the opposite effect going up in size to a 1uF cap. In either direction it was too clean at 1 or 2 mV, so I had to drop to 500uV/Div...and even though the visual was obvious in this case, it was still nice have the numbers on the screen:
SDS00189.png
SDS00190.png

Without the ability to go below 1mV/Div, the measurement numbers would have been the only way to tell the difference.
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

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Nice! 8)
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

Yes that is exactly the reason I was referring to for wanting to upgrade from my analog Tek.
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

I got another toy today. I like my Tenma audio signal generator, but I don't like not having a screen telling me the amplitude. Today I received my Uni-T UTG932E signal generator from an evil corporation that ships faster than others.

First, I love how small it is. The Siglent generator I tried out was great, but it was huge and expensive. This thing is small and fairly well priced. Build quality, and signal quality were all good. I tried different signal types, different termination simultaneously, and it was all great (except for my learning curve where I made mistakes in the setup, and then fixed it lol).

You can see how small it is compared to my attenuator or scope:
signal-generator.jpg

Here's two nearly perfectly matched signals from both channels:
SDS00194.png

And then I started messing around:
SDS00196.png

I probably started doing goofy stuff after that. But anyway, I dig it. It works well.

Thanks,
Josh
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by crgfrench »

I'm still using the old Tenma 72-505. That Uni-T looks nice!
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Re: Oscilloscope and DMM Suggestions !

Post by JMPGuitars »

crgfrench wrote:
Sat 05/23/20 11:30 pm
I'm still using the old Tenma 72-505. That Uni-T looks nice!
For the most part, the Tenma was great for me too. Not knowing the amplitude without doing extra work was the straw that broke my poor camel's back. It is fine for most stuff and gives a good signal.

It occurred to me that my other photo doesn't show the size too well. This one is better:
toys.jpg

Camera perspective is funny. I took another one that the AWG looked almost as big as the scope.
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