Do I need an Oscilloscope that costs $$$$$

[njkmonty]

After researching online  i came across the popularity of the Rigol DS1054Z Oscilloscope.
but thought i may get some input from those knowledgeable in the area.

At this stage my only real desire to get an Oscilloscope was to
calibrate delay based pedals
after building an ada flanger and memory man delay i  wondered about any improvement
gained from proper calibration.

I dont mind saving for a good piece of equipment however if im only after for a simple purpose
are there other options that anyone can suggest?

i see all these different options on ebay etc
handheld devices  etc etc

can anyone point me in the right direction?

[DIY Bass]

I have a DSO138.  It is available as a kit or assembled.  Single channel but pretty handy unless you start to get into measuring digital clock etc (fastest frequency response is about 500kHz from memory).  DSO 150 looks similar but I think a bit more expensive and a bit higher specs

[njkmonty]

would a 2 probe scope be required for balancing bbd outputs?   
because if thats the case , the DSO138 has only one?

[merlinb]

would a 2 probe scope be required for balancing bbd outputs?   

Your grandfather's scope only had one channel and he put a man on the moon, so what's your problem?
Sure you can balance with one channel; just go back and forth. Channels are like money; you don't need it but you can certainly have more. I use a Rigol DS1102E and an old 2-channel analog scope, and it's more that I need for pedals.

[njkmonty]

so what's your problem?

no problem here.
never had a scope before.
would prefer not to buy a single channel one,  and someone say to me later  , "oh, you need a dual channel for that"

what i am trying to ascertain is if my requirements are very simple  does anyone have actual suggestions of what to purchase?
I have had the cheap DSO138  model suggested.
Are there any other recommendations of to consider?

[merlinb]

what i am trying to ascertain is if my requirements are very simple

You're making guitar effects pedals. So yes.

does anyone have actual suggestions of what to purchase?

Rigol DS1102E

I have had the cheap DSO138  model suggested.

You could buy nine more for the price of a new scope... then you'd have ten channels! 

[DIY Bass]

I know nothing about it, but I just saw that Hantek do a 2 channel scope, multimeter and waveform generator in the one unit.  Looks like a cool toy.  The screen looks pretty small, bu tthen the dso138 has a pretty small screen too.  No idea what it is like to actually use though.

[anotherjim]

Most single channels almost have a second channel - the external trigger input. So having found with the 1 channel that the event you want to reference to is working as it should, you attach that to the external trigger, then your single channel can look at anything that's occurring at or after the trigger event.
Example:- your BBD null check, external trigger from any one of the BBD clock pins, then you should have a stable view of any clock glitches from the output on the single channel view.
That said, with the class of products like the Rigol, 2 channel + display of measurements isn't that expensive and don't take up much more bench space.

[njkmonty]

cheers thanks for your reply's, so from what i gather if i can get an entry level Rigol
it will be more than adequate for my needs and any future learning curve electronic testing requirements:)

[ElectricDruid]

You don't *need* one to calibrate a delay, but if you have one you'll find that you use it all the time. It's much easier to *see* what's going on rather than try and measure it with a multimeter and reduce it to just one number.

I use a very-similar-to-Rigol Owon digital scope and it's been a real winner. The on-screen measurement functions get used all the time (peak-to-peak voltage, frequency, etc etc).

[cloudscapes]

I've had the DS1054Z for 4-ish years, been very useful for me! It's a lot of bang-for-buck.

It's a bit overkill for just measuring DC bias or some frequency, but I'm a sucker for smooth gradient displays and how my waveforms look on one. Also for analyzing/decoding digital lines. I recently sued it to reverse-engineer how an OLED display was being initialized from an arduino demo, so I could write my own driver for a different IDE. Bizarrely this was less work than trying to figure out the bloated libraries it was using.

[MrStab]

as per RG's suggestion a few years ago, i got a Picoscope 2204A and i love it. does the job for everything audio, and up until 10MHz or so, and is simple yet useful enough. i think it cost £100 GBP or thereabouts.

[Transmogrifox]

I have a Siglent SDS-1202X-E (2-channel) and it has exceeded my expectations.  It may even be overkill for your purposes, but thought I would at least throw it out there.

Once you have an idea what you're looking for, customer reviews (like Amazon) on whatever you're after can help you steer clear of products that frequently produce lemons.  I would think your main criteria is that you get something that doesn't break after a few uses.

Owon, Siglent and Rigol in my reviewing all looked like reasonable choices for hobby work.

With things like Picoscope you have to consider whether requiring a PC at the test bench is going to be ok.  For that price you could couple an Arduino with an LCD and have an acceptable audio-frequency scope.  A quick web search shows quite a few DIY projects out there where this has been done.

On the other hand, maybe the money is worth the time you don't have to spend making a DIY scope.

[nickcordle]

I'll throw in a +1 for the low-end Picoscope, if you've already got a laptop or something nearby to use it with.  I bought the cheapest one they had, been very pleased with it here.  I considered an upgrade to a Rigol 1054Z (i think that's the one I was looking at) not that long ago, decided it wasn't worth it.  I can count on one hand the times I really needed more than two channels, and there aren't a lot of fast digital signals happening in my work.  Consider your needs of course ...

I'd consider upgrading for something like higher resolution ADCs, but that tends to be a -lot- more money, as far as I've seen.

[anotherjim]

Picoscope may be handy things, but I think they are horrendously overpriced for what they are.

[Ice-9]

I have a DSO138.  It is available as a kit or assembled.  Single channel but pretty handy unless you start to get into measuring digital clock etc (fastest frequency response is about 500kHz from memory).  DSO 150 looks similar but I think a bit more expensive and a bit higher specs

Avoid wasting money on one of these they are not of much use other than novelty.

[j_flanders]

however if im only after for a simple purpose, are there other options that anyone can suggest?

'Build' one yourself:

Tone generator: Any DAW will generate a frequency/wave form you want. Audacity is free. You can record it in any looper pedal (I use a Ditto looper pedal), or if you have two laptops/computers simply use one computer.

Audio probe: shielded piece of wire + jack + cap. Costs nothing.

Scope: any usb interface (I use my Zoom G3 digital modeller) + computer/laptop with a DAW with a plugin that has real time frequency response. I use Reaper + SPAN Voxengo plugin. Both are free.

It works perfectly fine for biasing and calibrating BBD based delay pedals. I used it on a EHX Memory Toy, Memory Man, Behringer Vintage  time machine.

I did it by ear before, but there's definitely some improvement by doing it 'visually'.

I already had the laptop, the Zoom G3 and the looper pedal for other purposes, so it basically costed nothing.
I use this setup a lot for a lot of stuff, from calibrating delays, to plotting frequency responses of pedals, amps and guitar pickups, looking at generated harmonics from distortion circuits, checking waveforms of tremolo pedals etc..

[amptramp]

I would not use anything that did not have at least a 10 MHz bandwidth because you may have to use a scope to see if an audio amplifier is oscillating.  Sometimes, being able to make sure a device is not behaving a certain way is just as important as confirming that it is doing what is expected.

I like the idea of a dual-channel scope because at some point you may get into digital pedals or analog pedals with digital switching and it is a lot easier to check that things are happening in the right sequence with the correct timing when you can put two traces on display.  Dual channel scopes are not all that much more expensive than single channel and it pays to allow some growth in capability even if you do not see any use for it at the moment.

What has not been explicitly stated yet in this thread is that it should be a triggered-sweep scope where you have control over when the visible trace begins.  Some simple scopes do not have this and it limits their usefulness.

[merlinb]

I have a DSO138.  It is available as a kit or assembled.  Single channel but pretty handy unless you start to get into measuring digital clock etc (fastest frequency response is about 500kHz from memory).  DSO 150 looks similar but I think a bit more expensive and a bit higher specs

Avoid wasting money on one of these they are not of much use other than novelty.

I'd actually like to own a couple of these, built 'pedal style' so I can hook them up to a pedal chain under development. It would be extremely handy to have such a small, portable, battery powered scope that can be used to probe non-grounded circuit elements!

[samhay]

I have one of these:
https://www.bitscope.com/product/BS05/

Does everything almost all pedal builders will need, including 2 channel analogue work, multichannel digital work, useful for PICs, etc., and mixed signal work, useful for BBDs.

Only thing I miss relative to the very expensive scopes we have at work is pretty average signal-to-noise, which should be better in a dedicated unit with a proper power supply (cf. USB bus).

I choose the bitscope as it has reasonably open software, which has native Mac support - don't ignore the software for a digital scope.