Testing Recievers with Oscope

[jstang]

Here's one measurement I don't recommend you do.....ever! unless you are qualified.... Possible electrocution.....

With a hand held Oscope.... Measure the voltage drop across a circuit breaker in the service box ( circuit breaker box ) while a power amp is running a heavy load or during turn on of a large amp.... Would never see it with a meter......

At turn on for large amps.... There are some huge but brief current spikes through those breakers..... Like 70 amps...... Also the spikes during large bass passages are interesting too...

I would never do that with anything but a hand held..... Connect your typical AC powered scope to the AC line and watch the smoke & sparks......

 

[jstang]

My hand held is single trace.... Bought it about 15 years ago... It's paid for itself over & over.....

Used it on cars with EFI to monitor the injector pulse width while driving the car.... Try that with an AC powered scope

There are far more advanced hand held scopes now that are dual trace. Might be time for an upgrade.

For dual trace I use one of the others I have.... But for fast , easy and odd measurements.... You can't beat a hand held.

And they are floating from ground or neutral.....in your hand....no AC cord or ground loops to even worry about....

Without worrying about about ground loops..that frees you up to make so many different and fast measurements..... Also don't need dual trace in some cases with a floating ground lead....just use the scope to see the difference between the two points.

Your scope is a 2 channel scope and can measure and display both channels at the same time.

 

[pjf610]

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[Homer4beer]

Great thread guys.......and great tips!

 

[Mike Sweeney]

If you really want to get your feet wet with a scope.. you can buy a kit for the signal generator for 10 bucks and the scope for 25. Is it great equipment? no.. but it DOES work and it's so cheap that if something bad happens, no big deal. I actually used both on a Marantz 2226B to set up the clipping and it worked fine at setting up a 2-3 Khz signal and checking for the 22 wish volts on the speaker output. Before all the alpha techs come unglued, my weapon of choice is a 453 scope which is what I cut my teeth on at Hughes long ago. My recommendation of the "toys" comes from building them this winter for something to do that was cheap and I was curious. They worked better than I thought they would in all honesty, There is a 40 dollar version of the scope that is a bit easier to use and comes as a partially built kit. Again, it's a very cheap way to get into playing with signals and scopes. The probes will cost more than the scope because you really, really want a x10 probe.