hickok 675a scope, any good for vintage work?

[stusnyder]

Is a hickok 675a scope good enough for alignments and general work on vintage tv's and radios?

[N2IXK]

Originally Posted by stusnyder

Is a hickok 675a scope good enough for alignments and general work on vintage tv's and radios?

That was more or less typical of "service shop" scopes back when these sets were in their prime. The waveforms shown on Sams Photofacts or other schematics were likely taken with something like it. They are certainly usable for general testing and alignment work on vintage TVs and radios, as that is exactly what they were made for.

But if you are looking to buy a scope for this kind of work, you can do far better with an old analog lab grade Tektronix or HP scope. A basic Tek 453 or similar which can be bought for ~$50 in good working order would have been an undreamed of luxury for the average TV repair tech back in the day. Why struggle with an blurry, uncalibrated, recurrent sweep service shop grade scope, when you can get a much better (used) instrument for next to nothing these days?

[bob91343]

Any oscilloscope is better than none at all. Having said that, Hickok is not a very sophisticated unit. If you can get it free or for a few bucks, well okay, but I feel that a fine vintage Tektronix will be inexpensive and run rings around any Hickok.

I was lucky and got a Tektronix 465 free; I had to fix it but that was easy enough. It goes to 100 MHz and is all solid state. Calibration is spot on. Trace can be set to very bright.

[stusnyder]

Already got a tek 475 with problems, thats in another thread, but anyway I've kinda given up on it, and found this local for 20 bucks.