That's a really solid scope.
+1 on the nuvistors and you might want to keep your eye out for
replacement tunnel diodes. They're getting a bit scarce, but you can
find them for a reasonable price if you're persistent and patient.
I have a couple spares, but the scopes haven't needed them.
When I was refurbing my 454 early this year, I had to track down a
number of problems and it amazes me that you can still find NOS parts
for it. Ebay is your friend here.
I also ended up with a cheap tube tester so I can at least check
emissions on the nuvistors.
Let's see, on mine I had a bad power transistor in the HV PS,
a bad reed relay in the bandwidth limiter switch, a bad transistor
in the single sweep control and a broken contact on the AC/Gnd/DC
switch for one channel. After fixing all that, it only needed very
minor tweaks to get in spec. Not bad for a 50 year old scope.
You can get a service manual free online, but you may want to find a
printed copy. The scans are OK, but the fold out schematics are
worth the cost of a printed manual.
If I had a choice, I'd like the larger screen on the 454a, but really,
you can't go wrong with this scope.
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On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 04:03:55AM -0800, John@... [TekScopes] wrote:
Brian:
yes, keep it and enjoy.
There's a 500pf 16kV door-knob capacitor in the EHT which sometimes fails, but it's not nessecarily going to go pop in your 'scope.
Other than that, the Nuvistors, being thermionic valves, do wear out, so you could inverst in a couple of spare 8393's when you spot some at a sensible price.
John
--
Paul Amaranth, GCIH | Rochester MI, USA
Aurora Group, Inc. | Security, Systems & Software
paul@... | Unix & Windows
