Test Equipment Anonymous

I'm not aware of any reliable TE dealer on this side of the pond so you guys are lucky to have at least one. I've been avoiding browsing Ebay lately because the prices asked even for junk are ridiculous. Facebook Marketplace and sometimes Craigslist have been pure gold. The sellers typically don't understand what they have or they just flat out what to get rid of it. And since it's local I can go pick it up and avoid the perils of shipping. The only unit that didn't pan out from these purchases was the recent 485 with the blown X6 multiplier, but it did give up a good trigger board.

The scene has changed, as scenes are prone to do.

Back around 1990 I was discussing with my manager (degree in EE and keen radio amateur who had drifted into software) what we were going to squander our bonuses on. I said Stewart of Reading was offering Tek 475s for £600, on special offer and I was tempted. He told me to forget it. It certainly wouldn't come with probes, and probes which would do it justice would cost half as much again. If it failed almost certainly I wouldn't be able to fix it myself and getting it fixed would be prohibitive. How times change. The last two 475s I bought were £5 each. One came with the front cover and a haul of respectable probes, including the original Tek numbers. You don't come across such things at every swapmeet, just enough to keep hope alive.

It's hard to compare things from country to country. I've no idea what it's like in the US. My impression is that even modest Hameg gear fetches a long price in Germany. The last time I came across one and expressed interest, the seller told me he was looking for paper money for it. I made an act of searching through my wallet and told him I had a Confederate dollar in there somewhere. He saw the funny side.

Back in 1990 even top end digitizing scopes were unpleasant to use. I know, I was using
HP54100d: 6 bit, 1GHz, 40MS/s. Knew the bloke who designed the digitiser; nice guy.

The advances in ADC and DAC technology has been stunning.

I'm sure I saw someone struggling away with one, risking rupture and spine damage under the weight of it, a couple of years back at the Chippenham winter rally.

You mentioned that £15 had been parted with.

Now this gold harvesting thing, well it may not be entirely unjustified and to be despised.

I visited Stewart's about six months ago; it was very sad. It was a veritable graveyard of ancient kit piled high. There was all sorts of stuff I recognised but whether any of it worked was another matter. I bought a Farnell power supply and all its electrolytics were duff. And it turned out to have a meter that stuck at one point. I managed to graft another meter movement in but it turns out that Farnell power supplies are not very nice to work on. It will be refurbished, just not yet. Radio rallies appear to be the best bets for buying test gear.

"It is always the electrolytics" is equally valid at hamfests.

There doesn't seem to be too much decent TE at hamfests; it is a crapshoot. Fleabay seems to have replaced hamfests for TE. It is easier to see stuff working (or not) on fleabay, with shipping competence being the main issue.

Having said that, to my surprise and annoyance, I picked up a nice HP 3GHz VNA boat anchor at a local small hamfest

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sun Nov 23, 2025 11:25 pm
Having said that, to my surprise and annoyance, I picked up a nice HP 3GHz VNA boat anchor at a local small hamfest

And at the same rally the year before, you picked up that excellent Marconi TF2700 LCR bridge, also to your surprise and annoyance.

Rallies have advantages in that the prices are better, and you can look items over and maybe even see them working. The disadvantage and part of the fun, is it all depends on what happens to be there.

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 24, 2025 8:53 am

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sun Nov 23, 2025 11:25 pm
Having said that, to my surprise and annoyance, I picked up a nice HP 3GHz VNA boat anchor at a local small hamfest

And at the same rally the year before, you picked up that excellent Marconi TF2700 LCR bridge, also to your surprise and annoyance.

Rallies have advantages in that the prices are better, and you can look items over and maybe even see them working. The disadvantage and part of the fun, is it all depends on what happens to be there.

I only bought the bridge to please you. Honest^[1].

It isn't usual to be able to see stuff working at rallies, especially since the larger ones are in the middle of a field.

"Serendipity" is my favourite word, and yes it does apply to rallies.

[1] Can I interest you in a nice bridge I have for sale?

I should have qualified my comment about radio rallies being good for buying test gear. A lot of the sellers there are having a bit of a clearout (possibly instructed to by SWMBO). They are usually very honest about what they're selling, know all its good and bad points, and are often concerned that it should go to a good home. The lack of power isn't usually an issue. Dealers, on the other hand, just need to make a sale, and you're lucky if they've even seen it working before offering it for sale at the maximum price they think they can get away with. In the unlikely event of my ever selling my lathe, any potential purchaser would be throughly vetted for suitability. Likewise, my test gear.

That's an interesting perspective, definitely worth keeping in mind.

Sometimes it will be a little tricky to distinguish between the two categories.

I don't take any interest in ham gear, hi-fi (of which there is generally little) domestic radios, tape recorders, disco equipment etc. My observation of buying test gear from rallies is about the same as yours and is this.

Not much changes hands for more than £200.

I don't recall ever being outright lied to by a seller, such as being assured something works and finding a burned out mains transformer. The seller's idea of working and my idea of working are often two different things. eg Racal frequency counters which work on the low frequency range but not the high frequency range. Scopes where the delay sweep doesn't work. Things like that. Even if the equipment is powered up, it's not like having it at home on the bench, so it's hard to tell.

Very often the seller doesn't have that much of a clue about the item. Also, it's often been kept somewhere damp, such as a garage and it may well have been OK when it was put in there, ten years back. I can't recall buying anything where the seller was concerned whether it was going to a good home.

Quite a bit of it is stuff they want to get rid of, but it seems wrong to take down the dump, even though that may make more sense than selling it at a rally, all considered. They want to get a few quid and pay for the stall and the trip. Then there's silent key stuff. I get the impression that the modern ham gear is sold off, and there's a residue of test gear sold off by the club or friends of the SK for the family. Once again, the sellers may not have much idea what they are selling. These are usually get rid of it stalls and are often where the bargains are.

I see one or two serious sellers of TE at the bigger rallies, although I don't get the impression they are trying to make a living at it. Generally they don't have much of interest to me and their prices are too high.

I'm interested in boatanchor comms sets, nowhere as much as I used to be, but I will bite if I see something which catches my attention at a low price. Prices and conditions are all over the place.

Rallies can produce hauls of components, valves, wire, tools, manuals, cables and books. Cables can be real bargains.

My experience of instrument dealers is buying a couple of items from M&B Radio back in the day and a couple of items from Stewart's. I found there were no significant problems. Quite a few people have said they were satisified customers of Stewarts over the years.

A friend bought a Marconi distortion meter from another dealer, now closed. It appeared to be ex MoD and unopened. The frequency dial was completely out. He complained and was told it wasn't sold as calibrated, so they weren't interested. It wasn't capable of being brought into calibration and so was faulty. Rather than mess about with them any more, he investigated and found it was a manufacturing fault. Wrong component values had been fitted in the factory.