[time-nuts] Broadband synthesizer

[Will Matney]

Bill,

Believe it or not, the HP 8640B is one of the cleanest, as far as signal
goes, that you can get, and you can get an option that will take it to 1
GHz, if I remember. You can pick these up pretty cheap, but they have a
problem with some plastic gears going out on the tuning assembly. These are
old too, but you can find junkers for parts.

>From a report I read on signal purity once, the next best for these oldies,
was a Boonton 102, which outperformed a lot of modern generators concerning
purity. However, it won't go to 1 GHz, I don't think, and I don't think
there's an option for it.

If you're not too worried about extra clean signal purity, there are
several others, including ones made by Fluke, and or Wavetek. Don't get me
wrong, these not are cheap junk, it's just they didn't show as clean an
output as the HP and Boonton above. Without knowing any other features you
want, it's hard to tell you anymore than these recommendations.

I forget where I read the test done on several of these RF generators, but
it's on a website, and others on here may know of the tests I'm speaking
of. Also, on the HP 8640B, one could get those plastic gears recut in
brass, if they did break, and they would last forever.

Best,

Will

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 7/12/2011 at 7:41 PM Bill Dailey wrote:

>Looking for recommendations for a broadband synthesizer with external
reference connection, at least 1mhz to 1ghz with micro to millihertz
resolution.   Oh yeah under $1000 or so.  I found a real nice one from
holzworth but it is about $5k which is a bit rich for me.  I have seen.
Various hp synthesizer but digging through the specs and the number soup is
tough for a non-electronics guy.
>
>Tia,
>
>Doc
>
>Sent from my iPhone
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