[time-nuts] Re: Frequency counter recommendation wanted

[Bob Camp]

Hi

So here’s another “twist or two” to the decision process:

Back in the day, you had fancy counters and more generic stuff. The 5345/5360/5370 all are in
the fancy category. The SRS 620 also very much goes into this bucket. 

The fancy stuff inevitably has better specs than the more generic gear. It also has a design that 
(likely) uses crazier parts. What was crazy back then may or may not be crazy today. One guess
is that “crazy stuff” likely needs more attention to keep it working than the more generic designs. 

The advantage of going to the fancy stuff of generation zero is that it’s performance (still) is pretty
good. Price wise …. who knows?. The fancy stuff is more rare. That makes pegging a price or 
getting one in the next couple months (at a given price) a bit more questionable. You *might* get
one dirt cheap, if you shop for …. years?

The more generic gear is all over the place. It’s not as high spec, but there are dozens of them
up for sale every day. Finding a second (or third) one as a “parts donor” is not all that crazy an 
idea. Buying a 53181 for next to nothing to give you a supply for your 53132 … yup, that works. 

All of this still is based on a “I want to measure 10 MHz” sort of baseline. If 22.48 GHz is the typical
target, that’s a whole different ballpark. Multiple channels (to measure delta’s on 1 pps signals ) 
also change the target a bit. 

The next branch to this thing is the timebase. In a lot of labs, the counter had a TCXO (or XO) in
it. It never / ever ran on that timebase. It always was locked to “something else”. In the modern 
day, that might well be a GPSDO. Indeed this does have an impact on your counter purchase. 

We’re also still on the “stock lab test gear” trail. There are advantages to a professionally bundled
up device. There also are things you can do with various bits and pieces. TAPR is not at all a 
bad place to look for some of those pieces …..

Bob

> On Mar 13, 2023, at 6:23 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist <richard at karlquist.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/13/2023 2:24 PM, Bob Camp via time-nuts wrote:
> 
>> Indeed HP / Agilent / Keysight isn’t the only game in town. The SRS 620 is still a pretty good beast.
>> There are various “home brew” projects out there that compete quite well with a number of the counters
>> mentioned above.
> 
> SRS was a formidable competitor to HP/A/K due to its
> unique business model.  I would seriously consider
> anything they make.
> 
> Rick
> N6RK