The AM Forum

What is your favorite scope (make & model) for looking at your modulation envelope?

ECK

Caw!

I love my old TEK465B.
For digital storage and more speed, there are a lot of new models, but none built like the old 465B.

The analog Tektronix 100MHz models, otherwise any scope with access to deflection plates and preferrably having a CRT with plate pins on the barrel of the electron gun to avoid RF mixing with the rest of the tube. Not too picky.

Heathkit HO-10 - Always makes my audio look good on the CRT no matter how I sound on the air.

Just in case you ask:
My favorite screwdriver is a Phillips.

My favorite tape is duct tape.

My favorite connector is a BNC.

I agree on the 465B; wonderful old workhorse that did just about everything well. Unfortunately, I've sent all my 465B's off to the boneyard—with the old caps rapidly fading it just became too much of a project to keep them running. I've got a couple of Tek's newer 2000 series, and though not built as well, they work okay. Pretty much any of those old analog scopes will produce wonderful modulated RF envelopes. I've also got a modern digital scope, and for many things it's absolutely awesome, but it just doesn't deliver that nice sharp image of a modulated waveform; it's often all "jaggies".

I have 3.   Tek 454, 465B and a 2465.   Any one of the three will do most of the time.

Tektronix 465 and 453.  The 465 gets the most use but both of them work well.  Had to replace the low voltage supply capacitors in the 465 and several tantalums.    The Tektronix forum was very, very helpful.

Bill

Actually, my favorite scope is/was my old Tektronix 7623A mainframe scope. Absolutely fantastic for just about anything within its bandwidth. A superb trigger that would catch even the most fleeting events; direct access to the plates, and an early digital display. Mine stopped working years ago, but I keep it around just in case I ever feel like making a project out of it. I've got the complete service manual. Those old style storage CRT's are pretty much unicorns these days, so hopefully that's not the problem.

I remember a really old TEK boatanchor- must have weighed 120lbs that had a long retention phosphor that “stored” a shadow of a trace. This was before a digital device.
It had a large round screen. Do not know the model.

I'll be an oddball in the group, but my favorite was my first....

I had (still have, but it's been stored for at least a decade) a Hewlett Packard Model 175 scope.  This beast had a pair of 50MHz vertical plugins, and a main/delayed sweep plugin. The CRT would glow in the dark when the lights were off, an eerie big green eyeball in my room.  It was minted the same month I was, September 1963 -- I got it from the junkpile at a local college while I was a student, it was one of a few firsts that year...

Ed

Philips/Fluke PM3055. Still use it quite often, not as much as my Siggy SDR1202X-E. Especially when I don't trust the digital wizardry inside the Siggy. Which has some weird, unresolved bugs in it. The PM3055 has none. Limitations yes, bugs no. And nothing beats that good old analog feel.

Love it! We Jersey guys get it.

Never used a Heath scope
Agree on duct tape
Love BNCs

However, I loathe Phillips Head screws. I believe that the inventor of the
“phillips head” should be tried and charged for inciting normally calm and sanguine individuals to boil over with profanity and rage when the poorly designed abominable “+” corners round off-first the screw and the screwdriver, rendering the connection a high security fastener that cannot be opened except with a drill or dremel or dynamite…😬😉😂 Torx or hex forever!!

First scope as JN WN2ZPS/WB2ZPS was a Precision ES-500 from the earth 1950s.  Only had about a 500 kHz    bandwidth, so I generally would sniff off the 465 kHz IF of my E. H. Scott SLRM.  Later bullt a small LC network tuner couple directly to the vertical deflection plates.  Over the years several Teks have gravitated into the shack.  One of the best has been a free, come and get it 535A dual channel lab monster on its cart complete with several plug ins, including a VHF/UHF spectrum analyzer.  Got
it from Uncle Al, W1UX, who told me it came from the URI EE lab, I thought it looked familiar, probably used it there in college.  Currently using a compact Tek 422 portable dual channel, with a National MB-40 wide range tunable plate or grid tank transmitter coupling network into the vertical input, and and about 10 feet of wire in the basement shack overhead as an antenna.  With the gain on the scope cranked up high enough, can not only look at any transmitter in the shack, but also Joe, N1VIV AM Carrier Net NCS’s mod waveform from down the street, and that of our local AM broadcast station, WBLQ, Westerly RI, about a mile away.

I’m with K9MB on screw heads, absolutely detest Phillips heads in wood and decking screw applications.  In my book, whoever came up with the Torx head deserves a Nobel prize.  Use ceramic coated T25 decking screws now in all my woodworking.

Tektronix 7854, I have a pair as bench scopes.  But for just modulation monitoring it is difficult to beat the convenience of the Heathkit HO-10/SB-610.

Rodger WQ9E

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fu3XebQKvrw

Tek 2213A. Cheap and available.

Not my favorite, but my "first" scope was a Admiral (I think 12 or 14" picture tube) TV that I "converted". I think I was 12 to 15 years of age and found the conversion info either in Radio & TV News or Radio-Electronics magazine.

My first "real" scope was a Heathkit IO-12 with a 5 inch CRT; roughly at the same time also a Heathkit HO-10. Both Heathkit's were part of a Heathkit push when I worked at Lafayette. I had to build them as an advertising display. After roughly less then two years of Lafayette selling selective Heathkit products,  both companies separated and went their separate ways. I bought the demos that I built at store cost.

I've moved on to TEK scopes.

A couple of things here. In my HN-500 I have a built-in scope to monitor modulation. I need to rework the input circuit since I converted it to 160M. I have an OS-8C and its commercial clone, Waterman Pocketscope when working have a nice solid trace on them. (the OS-8 needs a cap replaced, next in the cue!). But for all time working on the bench I love my Tek 465. What sold on me on that is they would get slammed into bulkheads and ladders on ship and still continue to work. After working on tons of Tektronics equipment, I thought their service manuals were the best in the business!

Oops. I forgot, the Tektronix RM-503. 4 of them here.  So useful.

Rackmount 561A in the cabinet with the 4x4-125A amp  8)
Command Sets for 40 & 80 and screen modulator on top.

B&K 1431. My first scope which I still have and it works perfectly.

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I have to admire the excellent integration of the scope into the amplifier. The systems approach!

I use a Tek 2205.  For monitoring modulation, a Heathkit SB-610.

73, Brad K4RT