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Anyone ever use either of these O-Scopes?

mackinthebox

mackinthebox

Active Member
$65 Hewlett Packard 1740A OSCILLOSCOPE (100MHz)
$65 Hewlett Packard 1741A OSCILLOSCOPE (100MHz)

Im looking at getting one of the above scopes and was wondering if anyone has any experience with them
it would be used for testing tube and SS amplifiers :)

thanks!
 
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You can't go wrong with either of those. Plenty of bandwidth for any audio project, they're both dual channel/dual trace. HP made outstanding test equipment.
 
A 1742A was my only scope for a few years and it did the job quite well. It looks identical to the 1741A. I paid about the same amount for it too.
 
I've used 'em hard and didn't break anything, but I would advise tracking down at least one 100X passive probe if you're going to be working around tube amps. These probes usually have 1~2kV voltage ratings, which will keep you from blowing up the vertical input section.
 
I've owned a 1741 and a freind of mine had one of the variants. My freind asked me to fix his. The display was off screen. I troubleshot it to the vertical amp.

I thought, "I'll just get another vertical amp IC." I was working for hp at the time and found that the part was obsolete. I knew some people that worked at the Santa Rosa site where they had a bone yard of obsolete hp equipment. I was told, "You're not the first one to look for these. Sorry, we don't have a single one.".

So, that was the end of that scope's life. hp manufactured the IC's themselves. A (good)vertical amplifier is quite tricky to fabricate and trying to substitute an IC would probably be more difficult than the outcome would warrant.

For $65 bucks, if it works, go for it. Just know that if parts die, many are too specialised to effect a repair. But that goes for most vintage test equipment.
 
Jon_Logan said:
For $65 bucks, if it works, go for it. Just know that if parts die, many are too specialised to effect a repair. But that goes for most vintage test equipment.
Click to expand...

Too frequently true. I still have a Tek PG502 fast pulse generator plug-in that served faithfully for many years, but it's now permanently out of service due to failure of unobtainable Tek-proprietary ICs. My 'new' workhorse is an ancient HP 215A, which is about 40X bigger and heavier, but uses all discrete semiconductors.
 
ok awesome, thanks for the info
they have several for sale so I will definitely pick one up soon
if I have the spare cash I may just buy a second one to keep in the closet in case the other craps out
spare parts are always good to have
 
We had a 17 forty something scope at work at one time, it was pretty much assigned to audio type work. As for HP gear of that era, all I can think of is, the knobs seem to break alot. The actual plastic of the knobs that is. Knobs can crack all the way thru, or extensions of the knobs break. But I have seen that also in Tek stuff of the same era. I think they eventually improved that. Make sure you got a nice sharp trace that is bright enough to see in room light.
 
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