Thanks for your videos. I was an EE at Tektronix in the Lab Oscilloscope Division at the peak of the company, in the 1980s. We had some really phenomenal solid-state lab 'scopes, including the 7834 500MHz phosphor-storage mainframe, and 7104 1GHz realtime analog mainframe that could display a single-shot waveform at 200picoseconds/division (and had an effective writing rate greater than 30cm/ns or greater than the speed of light). You can't appreciate how revolutionary this instrument was unless you've tried to capture a single-shot event such as a nuclear test, using a traditional 'scope with a camera hung on the CRT loaded with 10,000ASA Polaroid film. However, many of the seasoned EEs at Tek considered the later 500-series, especially this 551 dual-beam as the finest instruments the company ever produced. They didn't have the performance of the solid-state 7000-series 'scopes but as you can see, the design and workmanship was incredible. As far as the Telefunken tubes, they may be original. We had a European division that manufactured in the Common Market (EEC) to avoid onerous import duties and those tubes may have been installed at the EEC plant even though the panel says Beaverton, OR. That was before my time so I'm not sure. I've owned several 500-series instruments that had 100% original tubes, the designs were very conservative and the tubes lasted a long time. I have a 575 curve tracer from this era with 100% original tubes and it's in perfect operating condition.
If you are still in the Beaverton Oregon area, you should try Tektronics soup at Thai Bloom off Cedar Hills Blvd. Really good stuff. I used to work at the auto center across the street and worked on a lot of cars owned by Tektronics employees. Good people.
I was given a 541A. Do you have a service manual ? Is there somewhere advice to restore these ? Same for a 465. I got the service manual for a 465B that I took too, but I'm scared to power it up if something blows. Last, to feed them some nice signal to watch, I have a working type 115 pulse generator.
Grew up in Beaverton and Portland. We used to go to that Tektronix surplus store on a regular basis. I think I still have a box of drill bits with guides from them. My dad said that he heard a story that Tektronix was started by a couple of ex US Army Air Force servicemen after WW2. People told them that their business wouldn't last because there would never be a need for more than 1000 Oscilloscopes in the world - ever!
A lovely piece of kit. I spent some years in my early 20's repairing and re-calibrating similar 'scopes, mostly 545 and 585s, type 8x plug-ins etc. Just so that you know, you have to use special silver-loaded solder on those ceramic strips. If you use regular solder, you can break the bond between the metallization and the ceramic, which can make life unexpectedly interesting with some parts running at 500v. You really don't want those just waving around in the air... I hope this helps if/when you need to do some maintenance.
Sean Hirsch It is not tax. It simply costs more to produce higher quality goods. I will give you an example. I used to make precision wheel dressers. They were very expensive to purchase too. There was the one you received, and the parts we scrapped that we could have made 10 more out of that went into making each one we sold. Now the Chinese would have ignored those minor blemishes, and just sold all 11. But for us to justify the cost we charged each unit we shipped was perfect. When you got a unit from us the deal was done then too. You got what you expected, without having to find problems, and then have to subsequently deal with those. You as a consumer see none of any of that though. You just see that the US made product costs much more than the Chinese stuff does.
I see that lack of quality and it drives me nuts. China also doesnt enforce regulations regarding environmental safety and child labor making production costs much lower.
I just stumbled into this post. I worked at Tex as a college student (Oregon State) from 1961-1962 during the summers. I assembles the sub chasis with the silver solder saddles where the capacitors and resistors were secured. We could check out scopes from their lending lab and take home to play with. As I remember the duel trace scope at the time cost $3,900. I was so impressed because this was the same price as a new Corvette. This video brought back many great memories. Also, the first computer I was introduced to was a vacuum tube model located in the basement of the OSU math department. Took up about 1,000 sf and required large A/C to cool the room. Slower and less capable than a cell phone.
3:21 that is a lot of tubes! if you need any i have a bunch, and a store near where i live in silicon valley called Halted Electronics also has a large selection of old tubes. this equipment is really wonderful.
Hello from Portland Oregon. I know the first two locations of Tektronix. It started as a radio repair shop. Now it's a bicycle repair shop. The second location which is the address of the first known advertisement has a nightclub now. Between the two locations on the same street is the childhood home of Linus Pauling (this fact has nothing to do with oscilloscopes). One of the founders of Tektronix Howard Vollum wrote his senior thesis at Reed College on Oscilloscopes. Reed College surprisingly has a nuclear reactor which is run by undergraduates. My dad worked for Tek when I was a child and I think he is the reason floppies were 1.44 megabytes. Back then almost anyone with a technology career in the region had worked for Tek at some point. A while ago someone told me the US government bought a new scope for every nuclear test because they became radioactive. Engineers knew that the only part likely to become radioactive because of what elements it was made of was purely cosmetic.
I HAVE one of those here!! Lol, somebody at my local ham club was giving it away because it took up too much space. It even still works a bit! We had a lot of fun taking it apart/reassembling/admiring/cleaning out the mice nest, crazy to see a video of it :P
Greetings from near Portland, Oregon...Tektronix "campus" is located in a suburb of Portland called Beaverton. It was once a shining star of the area but has been diminished in the last 20 years by overseas competition, like a good portion of the rest of the American Economy! Tek did however act as a "magnet" to bring more tech companies to the Portland area. Much like Hewlett-Packard did to the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley. FYI, Tektronix has a company store where common folk(like myself) can go twice a week and purchase surplus equipment and reminisce about the good old days.
+Ryan Miller There is also a great place called Surplus Gizmos. Its an awesome place to go and check out. PAI you say Oregon better than many Americans :) Greetings from Portland (Beaverton actually) Oregon.
Geiger Mouse I'm actually over on the other side of the Columbia River(refugee from Silicon Valley), so getting to Beaverton area is not that frequent given that famous Portland traffic! BTW, I misspoke..the company store is twice a month not twice a week.
Ahh yes, I have yet to make it out to Gizmos but hope to one of these days. Old man Bob was on the SE side of PDX. I also used to hit Wacky Willies surplus MANY years ago. I see there may be a new shop opening up (they bought out Bob's inventory). See atomicsurplus.com ... says brick and mortar in august/sept.
I just came across this on TH-cam. I worked for Tektronix for 23 years, my father and my uncle before that. A few details about that model of oscilloscope. The solder strips are ceramic, manufactured by Tektronix including the plastic mounting clips. Except for the vacuum tubes (valves) and sockets, resistors, and capacitors, Tektronix made everything in that oscilloscope. Nuts, bolts, sheet metal, switches, knobs, face plate, CRT, transformers, cart, etc.
The ceramic terminal solder strips need to be repaired with high silver solder as regular lead-tin solder will dissolve the plating off the ceramic strips. Many of the scopes has a short length of the correct silver solder inside for field repair purposes.
I suggest that you research the term 'distributed amplifier'. It's a type of amplifier that overcomes the effect of the irreducible self capacitances of the valves (i.e. thermionic tubes') by incorporating them into a pair of delay lines - one in the control grid circuitry, the other in the anode circuitry. Each section of the delay line incorporates one valve (or, in a push-pull amplifier, a matched pair of valves.) The idea is that the input signal and the output signal proceed through the amplifier at the same rate, keeping in step with each other. The distributed amplifier was patented in 1936 by William S. Percival who I believe was an employee of E.M.I. Ltd., Hayes, Middlesex, England. See Wikipedia. The delay inherent in the distributed amplifier is acceptable in oscilloscopes because it is often desirable to delay the application of the 'Y' axis signal to the vertical deflection system to give the time-base (aka 'sweep') trigger circuitry to get started. Modern digital oscilloscopes work on a completely different principle, employing a fast sampling system to take successive samples of the input signal which are then read to appropriate pixels on the display screen.
portland oregon! holla! :D I work doing motor repair out of Portland, and live very close to where that wonderful machine was built! Glad to see its functioning, appreciated, and far from home- but in the best home I could think of for it! cheers!
That screen still looks incredible after all these years! I'm shocked that nobody burned a trace into it. Really awesome to see old tech like this, and the construction techniques they used. Excellent teardown
The "plastic panels" you mentioned are really porcelain waffers. Also take note that the solder isn't typical 60/40 solder but special silver solder. In all you're very luck to own one of those. They're the cadillac of scopes.
A good reminder of just how much more there was to building instruments that long ago. When I was a child my father had vacuum tube oscilloscope that I used for learning. It was single trace device. The first dual trace scope I saw was from HP; that was in the 1070s. About a year later I saw a Tektronix unit and the was the best I had ever seen at that point but it was mostly solid state except for the CRT Display. Amazing to she so much functionality in a vacuum tube based unit like yours. I expect you will have a decent heat source from this if you keep it in your workshop.
When I started watching this video and saw the scope being opened up seeing all those old capacitors, the first thing that came to my mind, "Mr. Carlson is going to say all those capacitors will have to be replaced and.." Sure enough....
Greetings from Brazil! Congrats on the pretty cool channel! I'm a long time follower and I appreciate the videos a lot. Now that's a nice gift they've sent you! Those scopes are amazing part sources. I remember buying them on yard sales for as cheap as 15 euros when I lived in France a couple of years ago just to take them appart and use the parts. Everything inside is top quality grade. Tube sockets, tubes, transformers, pots, the best of the best. I still listen to a tube amp I built using the power transformer and the sockets and some tubes from one of those scopes. Everything is still as good today as back when they were made even the caps are still good (most of the times). Whenever I come across one of those I save everything I can, even the wires and screws. Top Quality. So thanks for sharing the cool stuff and all the power to ya! Dennis G.
Dude! The brightness of this oscilloscope screen is insane! Specially considering that it have seen more than 50 years of use! It must be the most stable phosphor known to men...Not the regular zinc sulfide doped with rare earths, I guess...
I love the old Tek scopes. I have a few. I think the oldest is my 545B. Paul, aka Mr Carlson's Lab and Alan, W2AEW, as already mentioned, are both Tektronix collector / aficionado's. Alan actually works for Tek as a field service engineer (I think). Paul has a Tek555 that is absolutely gorgeous. I think you would enjoy their channels and they yours.
A while back I saw an email offering an old Tek scope like this free to a good home, so I went and snagged it. It's a 536, with one plugin giving dual traces, and the cart. I still have it and it still works, though it's not my primary scope. TURN DOWN THE INTENSITY! You're going to end up burning that screen! The terminal strips are not plastic, but ceramic with silver bonded to them. If you use regular solder the connection will detach from the ceramic, you're supposed to use some silver-bearing solder, a small roll of which was typically supplied in the little compartment that you open at the end of the video. If your basement workshop sees any amount of dampness I would NOT keep that scope there, as there are potential problems with the power transformer absorbing moisture and failing, and they are unobtainium. There are a few pretty active Tek scope mailing lists, if you want to find out more...
Nice listening to the tones for the sine wave generator while watching traces on the old scope... I kept expecting a cutaway to the UFOs outside like in the old science fiction movies.
3:32 Be careful handling old vacuum tubes in devices where you have no documentation. The tube markings become brittle from heat and age, and will wipe off the with lightest touch, and you may now be unable to read the numbers you just removed. The white markings on the GE tube are crumbling and you probably did that when you pulled it out.
Hello back from Portland, Oregon USA, the tektronix lab is now Xerox, it is actually in Wilsonville, OR (and I hear in Beaverton also) which is south of Portland a few miles. as an older guy I have seen these sort of units manufactured by Tektronix. all over Oregon I believe you are very lucky that that unit works, although Tektronix is a super high quality manufacturer, those old caps must have seen better days. by the way , I think you must be a brilliant mind to be creating so many things and knowing how things work. KUDOS from USA
I said that some of the trim-pots are for the various screen adjustments. The trim-pots for those adjustments of the picture tube are of course under the EHT-supply. The trimpots in the front of the device have another purpose as you can see by taking a look at the original labels. Sorry but it was already late at night and I was already really tired when I recorded that part of the voice-over.
If you pan on using it, clean the fan. If it's been sitting around for a while, those old induction motors will chew themselves out whilst running. I made the mistake to leave one uncleaned and it died weeks after.
i worked on a lot of scopes from that era. These instruments are very well designed and are remarkably long lived. My own 545 ran for 36 years with just a replaced tube here and there, it was replaced just because I needed a higher bandwidth instrument and the new scopes are so much smaller. . Those white strips are ceramic and all the solder is silver bearing solder, if you replace any soldered parts use silver bearing solder. A drop of oil in each of the fan bearings every couple of years will keep that fan working for a very long time. Outside of the tubes the only other parts that will fail over time are the electrolytic caps, they dry out over time but some will last over 30 years.
I'm neither from Oregon, nor from Guernsey, but I stil must leave a comment. What a beautiful unit! And it's so amazingly clean inside, especially for its age! Still in perfect working order - you don't see that very often with devices of that age!
Thanks for the greetings to Portland. Tektronics is just down the road from me. While their current manufacturing isn’t quit me as robust as the oscilloscope you have today, they still do good work.
That stuff is in amazing shape. I tried to buy one of those during an auction at my old school. Got outbid by a dealer who bought then entire lot for $1000 (about 10 of these scopes, and about 20 much smaller scopes). He then told us he'd sell us them at $500 EACH. For that I could have bought a modern scope. told him to go get bent...he never sold a single unit and was pretty upset. Oh well...greed got that idiot.
Great video! This Techtronix oscilloscope was destined for you. Even the logo suites your style! I'm not an engineer so I never realized that there existed such a wide range of uses for vacuum tubes. I was surprised to see them used as diodes.
Nice! From a time when things were built to last. I have a Tek 535 with the CA plugin stored away in my mothers basement. Must be close to 20 years since I had it powered up, but now I got a sudden urge to bring it home and play with it.
+Clemens S. Yes he has very thorough and well planned videos. Did you see his lab your video? Insane amount of stuff in such a small place. His test gear looks so numerous like its going to engulf him lol! Just wish I was more into ham radio, etc... Still watch all his videos tho!
That need special high silver solder or the plating dissolves away and the connection floats loose. Some units had a small coil of appropriate solder inside for field repairs.
What a thing of beauty and a joy forever! Absolute bobby dazzler :D Pretty good English accent, too, from the same era as that scope :P (That accent was called Heightened RP. I'll let you google that one :P)
Did you make a video for the sine wave generator? I can't remember, would be very interested to see it. As others have alluded to, Mr Carlson's Lab and w2aew are the absolute gurus when it comes to vintage Tektronix equipment. I believe there is a museum dedicated to vintage Tektronix equipment on the island of Guernsey.
Oh nice :) I remember to have been to PSI last year for a maintenance. PSI is not exactly in the center of Zurich, though - it's quite far out. Beautiful pieces you got there. Cheers!
FYI: (other comments NOT read) Those ceramic component mounting strips are restricted to silver solder only (reason?). Tektronix mfr'd them themselves, Every piece of gear using them had a meter length of silver solder attached to one of the covers for use during component replacement. During my high school 3 year/3 period Technical Electronics (1965-1968) we were often treated various Tektronix made films including one about the mfr of this line of o'scopes. Looks like yours had an external mounted power supply since the case was otherwise full. (Now to watch the rest of that video.)
Many years ago, I came into a Tek 555 Vacuum Tube scope. Mine was in pretty sorry shape, but is was great for keeping warm on those long cold winter days here in Canada. ;-)
A nice scope. the white strips are ceramic and you are suppose to use a special solder if making any repairs to prevent the metalization dissolving. you may find a little length of spare solder inside the machine somewhere, or if you write a nice letter to tektronix they may even send you some.
Those terminal strips are silver bearing ceramic; if you ever need to make repairs you MUST use the special solder; there should be a hank of it stored inside the scope.
Lovely. I've been collecting what seems to have been the local tv station engineer's toolkit as it became obsolete over decades. . The local electronics store has a 'consignment corner' where people can bring in their old equipment to resell pretty cheap. With environmental laws the way they are now, a commercial facility with old equipment is often stuck with a toxic liability. Some might welcome a tech collector.. Museums are a hard bunch to convince, though. :)
Those ceramic (and they are ceramic) assemblies use silver solder. Keep in mind that this was designed before there were polymers that would take the heat of soldering. Teflon would have been brownish yellow. Nylon would melt. If you use lead based solder, the terminals will disintegrate. There is a tekscopes group out there (yahoo groups?) for owners of vintage tektronics scopes.
At 10:46 if I switch my monitor to B&W I think I'm watching a 1950's Sci-Fi movie. Surprised the electrolytic capacitors are hanging in there. Cheers, Mark
You may be able to rent that to a film making company if they ever need a working model. I know there is a demand for old equipment like that in the film industry,prop departments are constantly looking for stuff like that to use in movie making. Its a rare piece of electronics that shows us how things were made robust back then. now days current electronics dont seem to hold up as long. that cooling fan is testament to that.
Love the commercial at the end, made me laugh. Could you do another demo, but explain what you are testing/generating, so we understand what buttons you are pressing, and knobs you are turning. and they function? Keep up the great work!
I have a number of old Tek scopes out in the storage shed..........I would bet my life I could go out and get one, and it would power right up like it was yesterday it was last used.......wish I was as confident with my new gear...........Tek was a leader in both Electronic Technology and the way a Company should be run.
Technology - in particular, electronics - has come such a long way in such a short period of time. It's difficult to imagine what we will have in say, ten years time.
That's a lot of beautiful Tek green! I love the old Tektronix logo. Greetings from Oregon! :D By the way, my co-worker used to work at Tektronix at the oscilloscope plant.
We had a next door neighbour who worked for Techtronics for over forty years, retiring from there. No doubt she may have worked on your osc. Her name was Liz Ott. Of German stock from South Dakota and Washington. Great score. Was it radioactive at all? :-)
I am re-watching your videos ( a bit sick atm) and I love these Tektronix scopes! I have a few myself (one being the 4 Ghz model from the mid sixties) They don't make am like that any more! Toodles! Paddy
Thanks for your videos. I was an EE at Tektronix in the Lab Oscilloscope Division at the peak of the company, in the 1980s. We had some really phenomenal solid-state lab 'scopes, including the 7834 500MHz phosphor-storage mainframe, and 7104 1GHz realtime analog mainframe that could display a single-shot waveform at 200picoseconds/division (and had an effective writing rate greater than 30cm/ns or greater than the speed of light). You can't appreciate how revolutionary this instrument was unless you've tried to capture a single-shot event such as a nuclear test, using a traditional 'scope with a camera hung on the CRT loaded with 10,000ASA Polaroid film. However, many of the seasoned EEs at Tek considered the later 500-series, especially this 551 dual-beam as the finest instruments the company ever produced. They didn't have the performance of the solid-state 7000-series 'scopes but as you can see, the design and workmanship was incredible. As far as the Telefunken tubes, they may be original. We had a European division that manufactured in the Common Market (EEC) to avoid onerous import duties and those tubes may have been installed at the EEC plant even though the panel says Beaverton, OR. That was before my time so I'm not sure. I've owned several 500-series instruments that had 100% original tubes, the designs were very conservative and the tubes lasted a long time. I have a 575 curve tracer from this era with 100% original tubes and it's in perfect operating condition.
If you are still in the Beaverton Oregon area, you should try Tektronics soup at Thai Bloom off Cedar Hills Blvd. Really good stuff. I used to work at the auto center across the street and worked on a lot of cars owned by Tektronics employees. Good people.
I was given a 541A. Do you have a service manual ? Is there somewhere advice to restore these ? Same for a 465. I got the service manual for a 465B that I took too, but I'm scared to power it up if something blows. Last, to feed them some nice signal to watch, I have a working type 115 pulse generator.
I was a ET at Scientific Atlanta in the 90's and we used Tektronix Network Analyzers to tune and set up linear Amplifiers. Great machines.
Grew up in Beaverton and Portland. We used to go to that Tektronix surplus store on a regular basis. I think I still have a box of drill bits with guides from them. My dad said that he heard a story that Tektronix was started by a couple of ex US Army Air Force servicemen after WW2. People told them that their business wouldn't last because there would never be a need for more than 1000 Oscilloscopes in the world - ever!
A lovely piece of kit.
I spent some years in my early 20's repairing and re-calibrating similar 'scopes, mostly 545 and 585s, type 8x plug-ins etc. Just so that you know, you have to use special silver-loaded solder on those ceramic strips. If you use regular solder, you can break the bond between the metallization and the ceramic, which can make life unexpectedly interesting with some parts running at 500v. You really don't want those just waving around in the air...
I hope this helps if/when you need to do some maintenance.
that's the way we used to build things in America. To last. wish we still saw the attention to detail like they used to do. beautiful.
We still do. But few can afford products made here.
True. We make it easier to buy cheap Chinese crap by over taxing our own products.
Sean Hirsch
It is not tax. It simply costs more to produce higher quality goods. I will give you an example. I used to make precision wheel dressers. They were very expensive to purchase too. There was the one you received, and the parts we scrapped that we could have made 10 more out of that went into making each one we sold. Now the Chinese would have ignored those minor blemishes, and just sold all 11.
But for us to justify the cost we charged each unit we shipped was perfect. When you got a unit from us the deal was done then too. You got what you expected, without having to find problems, and then have to subsequently deal with those.
You as a consumer see none of any of that though. You just see that the US made product costs much more than the Chinese stuff does.
I see that lack of quality and it drives me nuts. China also doesnt enforce regulations regarding environmental safety and child labor making production costs much lower.
that 50 year old beast is still alive and kicking .
"Made in U.S.A"
wow.. haven't seen that in a long time.
i see it all the time still, now its ussally on really shitty products that try to cash in on patriotism as a last ditch effort to sell.
+ Rinoa Super-Genius That sucks :(
Hi Rinoa
Something made in Channel Islands, never seen that ever! There are clearly bigger holes in my knowledge than I thought.
I think he means " U.S.A." as in United States of America. Not USA as in China, Shenzhen.
"Stay tuned for my next video where I show you my fully functional hydrogen bomb"
You're thinking of the PRE Apocalyptic Inventor. ;-)
Ja, ja, ja. He always promises, but never makes follow up videos.
I just stumbled into this post. I worked at Tex as a college student (Oregon State) from 1961-1962 during the summers. I assembles the sub chasis with the silver solder saddles where the capacitors and resistors were secured. We could check out scopes from their lending lab and take home to play with. As I remember the duel trace scope at the time cost $3,900. I was so impressed because this was the same price as a new Corvette. This video brought back many great memories. Also, the first computer I was introduced to was a vacuum tube model located in the basement of the OSU math department. Took up about 1,000 sf and required large A/C to cool the room. Slower and less capable than a cell phone.
3:21 that is a lot of tubes! if you need any i have a bunch, and a store near where i live in silicon valley called Halted Electronics also has a large selection of old tubes.
this equipment is really wonderful.
Hello from Portland Oregon. I know the first two locations of Tektronix. It started as a radio repair shop. Now it's a bicycle repair shop. The second location which is the address of the first known advertisement has a nightclub now. Between the two locations on the same street is the childhood home of Linus Pauling (this fact has nothing to do with oscilloscopes). One of the founders of Tektronix Howard Vollum wrote his senior thesis at Reed College on Oscilloscopes. Reed College surprisingly has a nuclear reactor which is run by undergraduates. My dad worked for Tek when I was a child and I think he is the reason floppies were 1.44 megabytes. Back then almost anyone with a technology career in the region had worked for Tek at some point. A while ago someone told me the US government bought a new scope for every nuclear test because they became radioactive. Engineers knew that the only part likely to become radioactive because of what elements it was made of was purely cosmetic.
I HAVE one of those here!! Lol, somebody at my local ham club was giving it away because it took up too much space. It even still works a bit! We had a lot of fun taking it apart/reassembling/admiring/cleaning out the mice nest, crazy to see a video of it :P
Very cool.
I'm always pleasantly surprised to see all the engineering and electronics channels watch each other's videos :D
I wasn't expecting the synth sounds.
I am 68, when I started out, it was with scopes like that at Boeing and the university of Washington.
Greetings from near Portland, Oregon...Tektronix "campus" is located in a suburb of Portland called Beaverton. It was once a shining star of the area but has been diminished in the last 20 years by overseas competition, like a good portion of the rest of the American Economy! Tek did however act as a "magnet" to bring more tech companies to the Portland area. Much like Hewlett-Packard did to the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley. FYI, Tektronix has a company store where common folk(like myself) can go twice a week and purchase surplus equipment and reminisce about the good old days.
Did you ever make it to Bob's R5D3 surplus shop before he passed away in November? He was super cool.
I pass by a place called " VintageTek" on hillsdale highway every day- Ive been meaning to peep in there.
+Ryan Miller There is also a great place called Surplus Gizmos. Its an awesome place to go and check out.
PAI you say Oregon better than many Americans :) Greetings from Portland (Beaverton actually) Oregon.
Geiger Mouse
I'm actually over on the other side of the Columbia River(refugee from Silicon Valley), so getting to Beaverton area is not that frequent given that famous Portland traffic! BTW, I misspoke..the company store is twice a month not twice a week.
Ahh yes, I have yet to make it out to Gizmos but hope to one of these days. Old man Bob was on the SE side of PDX. I also used to hit Wacky Willies surplus MANY years ago. I see there may be a new shop opening up (they bought out Bob's inventory). See atomicsurplus.com ... says brick and mortar in august/sept.
I just came across this on TH-cam. I worked for Tektronix for 23 years, my father and my uncle before that. A few details about that model of oscilloscope. The solder strips are ceramic, manufactured by Tektronix including the plastic mounting clips. Except for the vacuum tubes (valves) and sockets, resistors, and capacitors, Tektronix made everything in that oscilloscope. Nuts, bolts, sheet metal, switches, knobs, face plate, CRT, transformers, cart, etc.
Cool! That's the same model Tektronix oscilloscope my dad bought at a garage sale for $75 when I was around 10. Good times.
The ceramic terminal solder strips need to be repaired with high silver solder as regular lead-tin solder will dissolve the plating off the ceramic strips.
Many of the scopes has a short length of the correct silver solder inside for field repair purposes.
I suggest that you research the term 'distributed amplifier'. It's a type of amplifier that overcomes the effect of the irreducible self capacitances of the valves (i.e. thermionic tubes') by incorporating them into a pair of delay lines - one in the control grid circuitry, the other in the anode circuitry. Each section of the delay line incorporates one valve (or, in a push-pull amplifier, a matched pair of valves.) The idea is that the input signal and the output signal proceed through the amplifier at the same rate, keeping in step with each other. The distributed amplifier was patented in 1936 by William S. Percival who I believe was an employee of E.M.I. Ltd., Hayes, Middlesex, England. See Wikipedia. The delay inherent in the distributed amplifier is acceptable in oscilloscopes because it is often desirable to delay the application of the 'Y' axis signal to the vertical deflection system to give the time-base (aka 'sweep') trigger circuitry to get started. Modern digital oscilloscopes work on a completely different principle, employing a fast sampling system to take successive samples of the input signal which are then read to appropriate pixels on the display screen.
Thanks for that! I love the old tek scopes. Ceramic rails and silver soldered components all hand installed. Masterful engineering!
Nice video! Very clean unit you got there. One of the cleanest I have ever seen!
portland oregon! holla! :D
I work doing motor repair out of Portland, and live very close to where that wonderful machine was built! Glad to see its functioning, appreciated, and far from home- but in the best home I could think of for it!
cheers!
That boat anchor still works! Frigging awesome dude! Hope you got a good deal. The shipping could not have been cheap. Rock on! :)
That screen still looks incredible after all these years! I'm shocked that nobody burned a trace into it.
Really awesome to see old tech like this, and the construction techniques they used. Excellent teardown
A thing of beauty. I've got a Tek 556 from Guernsey.
That's beautiful. The craftsmanship that went into that is almost a lost art. Pleased to see that it didn't get scrapped.
TURN DOWN THE INTENSITY, YOU ARE KILLING THE PHOSPHORUS!!!!!
That trace has to be SHARP. If it is not focused any more, it is too bright.
That is some absolutely beautiful lab equipment in mint condition!
Congratulations!!!
Hello from Eugene. We are close to Portland. Love your videos
The "plastic panels" you mentioned are really porcelain waffers. Also take note that the solder isn't typical 60/40 solder but special silver solder.
In all you're very luck to own one of those. They're the cadillac of scopes.
agreed :-)
A good reminder of just how much more there was to building instruments that long ago. When I was a child my father had vacuum tube oscilloscope that I used for learning. It was single trace device. The first dual trace scope I saw was from HP; that was in the 1070s. About a year later I saw a Tektronix unit and the was the best I had ever seen at that point but it was mostly solid state except for the CRT Display. Amazing to she so much functionality in a vacuum tube based unit like yours. I expect you will have a decent heat source from this if you keep it in your workshop.
I love seeing old equipment with superb engineering. It's nice to see it was working so well still after all this time
Beautifully designed and built old 'scope. VERY pleased to see that it still works more than 50 years later.
Mighty handsome look'n scope you have there :^)
yeah, its exactly what you need
the scope that broke mr carlsons lab bench
When I started watching this video and saw the scope being opened up seeing all those old capacitors, the first thing that came to my mind, "Mr. Carlson is going to say all those capacitors will have to be replaced and.."
Sure enough....
holy crap - exactly the same here :D - replace the capacitors... :)
Fortunately, that scope is safely in Germany, far out of reach of Paul's scope grabbing fingers. :)
I had that same branded O Scope! Mine was tube based, and built in 1968 if memory serves me right.
Greetings from Brazil!
Congrats on the pretty cool channel! I'm a long time follower and I appreciate the videos a lot.
Now that's a nice gift they've sent you! Those scopes are amazing part sources. I remember buying them on yard sales for as cheap as 15 euros when I lived in France a couple of years ago just to take them appart and use the parts. Everything inside is top quality grade. Tube sockets, tubes, transformers, pots, the best of the best. I still listen to a tube amp I built using the power transformer and the sockets and some tubes from one of those scopes. Everything is still as good today as back when they were made even the caps are still good (most of the times). Whenever I come across one of those I save everything I can, even the wires and screws. Top Quality.
So thanks for sharing the cool stuff and all the power to ya!
Dennis G.
Dude! The brightness of this oscilloscope screen is insane! Specially considering that it have seen more than 50 years of use! It must be the most stable phosphor known to men...Not the regular zinc sulfide doped with rare earths, I guess...
I love the old Tek scopes. I have a few. I think the oldest is my 545B. Paul, aka Mr Carlson's Lab and Alan, W2AEW, as already mentioned, are both Tektronix collector / aficionado's. Alan actually works for Tek as a field service engineer (I think). Paul has a Tek555 that is absolutely gorgeous. I think you would enjoy their channels and they yours.
Hello from Portland! Tektronics still exists today in Bearverton, a suburb of Portland. Tragically, however, they have changed their logo.
A while back I saw an email offering an old Tek scope like this free to a good home, so I went and snagged it. It's a 536, with one plugin giving dual traces, and the cart. I still have it and it still works, though it's not my primary scope. TURN DOWN THE INTENSITY! You're going to end up burning that screen! The terminal strips are not plastic, but ceramic with silver bonded to them. If you use regular solder the connection will detach from the ceramic, you're supposed to use some silver-bearing solder, a small roll of which was typically supplied in the little compartment that you open at the end of the video. If your basement workshop sees any amount of dampness I would NOT keep that scope there, as there are potential problems with the power transformer absorbing moisture and failing, and they are unobtainium. There are a few pretty active Tek scope mailing lists, if you want to find out more...
Wow. Amazing how long these tubes last in a properly engineered piece of equipment.
Nice listening to the tones for the sine wave generator while watching traces on the old scope... I kept expecting a cutaway to the UFOs outside like in the old science fiction movies.
3:32 Be careful handling old vacuum tubes in devices where you have no documentation. The tube markings become brittle from heat and age, and will wipe off the with lightest touch, and you may now be unable to read the numbers you just removed. The white markings on the GE tube are crumbling and you probably did that when you pulled it out.
I'm currently working in horgen only a stones throw from Zurich. As a visitor from the UK iv got to say it's a beautiful place
Hello back from Portland, Oregon USA, the tektronix lab is now Xerox, it is actually in Wilsonville, OR (and I hear in Beaverton also) which is south of Portland a few miles. as an older guy I have seen these sort of units manufactured by Tektronix. all over Oregon I believe you are very lucky that that unit works, although Tektronix is a super high quality manufacturer, those old caps must have seen better days. by the way , I think you must be a brilliant mind to be creating so many things and knowing how things work. KUDOS from USA
I said that some of the trim-pots are for the various screen adjustments. The trim-pots for those adjustments of the picture tube are of course under the EHT-supply. The trimpots in the front of the device have another purpose as you can see by taking a look at the original labels. Sorry but it was already late at night and I was already really tired when I recorded that part of the voice-over.
If you pan on using it, clean the fan. If it's been sitting around for a while, those old induction motors will chew themselves out whilst running. I made the mistake to leave one uncleaned and it died weeks after.
i worked on a lot of scopes from that era. These instruments are very well designed and are remarkably long lived. My own 545 ran for 36 years with just a replaced tube here and there, it was replaced just because I needed a higher bandwidth instrument and the new scopes are so much smaller. .
Those white strips are ceramic and all the solder is silver bearing solder, if you replace any soldered parts use silver bearing solder. A drop of oil in each of the fan bearings every couple of years will keep that fan working for a very long time.
Outside of the tubes the only other parts that will fail over time are the electrolytic caps, they dry out over time but some will last over 30 years.
Hi from Portland Oregon. I've driven past Tektronics and I was like "huh, sounds familiar." I didn't realize how big they were.
A bit late, but I'm sendin' some love from Portland, Oregon.
I'm neither from Oregon, nor from Guernsey, but I stil must leave a comment. What a beautiful unit! And it's so amazingly clean inside, especially for its age! Still in perfect working order - you don't see that very often with devices of that age!
Wow, I just today watched Mr. Carlson's Lab video with the 555 model he got, working out of the box too. Amazing piece of device!
Thanks for the greetings to Portland. Tektronics is just down the road from me. While their current manufacturing isn’t quit me as robust as the oscilloscope you have today, they still do good work.
That stuff is in amazing shape. I tried to buy one of those during an auction at my old school. Got outbid by a dealer who bought then entire lot for $1000 (about 10 of these scopes, and about 20 much smaller scopes). He then told us he'd sell us them at $500 EACH. For that I could have bought a modern scope. told him to go get bent...he never sold a single unit and was pretty upset. Oh well...greed got that idiot.
Nah...we did however have a good chuckle over it.
I loved the British voice LOL ;-)
Brilliant video again, was there some Kraftwerk in this video?
Sound very kraftwerk to me.
Great video! This Techtronix oscilloscope was destined for you. Even the logo suites your style! I'm not an engineer so I never realized that there existed such a wide range of uses for vacuum tubes. I was surprised to see them used as diodes.
Nice! From a time when things were built to last.
I have a Tek 535 with the CA plugin stored away in my mothers basement. Must be close to 20 years since I had it powered up, but now I got a sudden urge to bring it home and play with it.
i actually own one of these and still use it! it rocks! i would like to upgrade one day but its serving me well
Hello from Jersey C.I (next to Guernsey). Keep up the good work :)
so much satisfying to see old circuitry more than today ones so complex
Spent a lot of time with the model 545 scope many years back around 1968.
Holy shit, this is a true post-apocalyptic device. Like Fallout type of post-apocalyptic.
Im curious how you got your hands on that? Mr Carsons lab has one almost like it. Very Cool!
+Clemens S. Yes he has very thorough and well planned videos. Did you see his lab your video? Insane amount of stuff in such a small place. His test gear looks so numerous like its going to engulf him lol! Just wish I was more into ham radio, etc... Still watch all his videos tho!
I love the teal and grey colors of old machines.
I used to live in Guernsey in the '70s. Tektronix were large employers at that time. Nice CRO!
Probably the same type of oscilloscopes they used to test the Apollo space program. Amazing it still works after 50 years.
That opening at the end was made for that purpose.
You will find that the solder strips are silver-plated ceramic.
I really enjoy your channel, very interesting!
That need special high silver solder or the plating dissolves away and the connection floats loose. Some units had a small coil of appropriate solder inside for field repairs.
This is the kind of thing I would set up as a centrepiece in my living room, possibly with some of the panels removed to expose the internals.
What a thing of beauty and a joy forever! Absolute bobby dazzler :D
Pretty good English accent, too, from the same era as that scope :P (That accent was called Heightened RP. I'll let you google that one :P)
Did you make a video for the sine wave generator? I can't remember, would be very interested to see it. As others have alluded to, Mr Carlson's Lab and w2aew are the absolute gurus when it comes to vintage Tektronix equipment. I believe there is a museum dedicated to vintage Tektronix equipment on the island of Guernsey.
Oh nice :) I remember to have been to PSI last year for a maintenance. PSI is not exactly in the center of Zurich, though - it's quite far out. Beautiful pieces you got there. Cheers!
Plot twist.....the gift was actually radiation in the form of contaminated equipment.
Just what I was thinking !!
They probably offered it back to Techtronics, but when they found out where it came from they said no thanks.
I'd still want it, even if it lived inside the reactor :)
Oh, Mr Carlson's (Lab) would be proud. He is the raving fan of the Techtronic scope. Great acquisition
FYI: (other comments NOT read)
Those ceramic component mounting strips are restricted to silver solder only (reason?). Tektronix mfr'd them themselves, Every piece of gear using them had a meter length of silver solder attached to one of the covers for use during component replacement. During my high school 3 year/3 period Technical Electronics (1965-1968) we were often treated various Tektronix made films including one about the mfr of this line of o'scopes. Looks like yours had an external mounted power supply since the case was otherwise full. (Now to watch the rest of that video.)
Many years ago, I came into a Tek 555 Vacuum Tube scope. Mine was in pretty sorry shape, but is was great for keeping warm on those long cold winter days here in Canada. ;-)
A nice scope. the white strips are ceramic and you are suppose to use a special solder if making any repairs to prevent the metalization dissolving. you may find a little length of spare solder inside the machine somewhere, or if you write a nice letter to tektronix they may even send you some.
from texas, found you through AvE
Those terminal strips are silver bearing ceramic; if you ever need to make repairs you MUST use the special solder; there should be a hank of it stored inside the scope.
What a piece of engineering. Still hard to imagine that designing and producing such equipment without CAD and simulation software.
This reminds me of the unpacking of the interociter, from the movie, "This Island Earth."
Lovely. I've been collecting what seems to have been the local tv station engineer's toolkit as it became obsolete over decades. . The local electronics store has a 'consignment corner' where people can bring in their old equipment to resell pretty cheap. With environmental laws the way they are now, a commercial facility with old equipment is often stuck with a toxic liability. Some might welcome a tech collector.. Museums are a hard bunch to convince, though. :)
Salem, Oregon!
Great content. I'm in awe of your talent, creativity, and resourcefulness.
Those ceramic (and they are ceramic) assemblies use silver solder. Keep in mind that this was designed before there were polymers that would take the heat of soldering. Teflon would have been brownish yellow. Nylon would melt. If you use lead based solder, the terminals will disintegrate. There is a tekscopes group out there (yahoo groups?) for owners of vintage tektronics scopes.
You could make some sweet sci fi jams with that.
Wow Tektronix is the king of scopes. They're so beautifully engineered. Geeks that really care.
I bet there are several very good bakelite knobs on there - very nice
At 10:46 if I switch my monitor to B&W I think I'm watching a 1950's Sci-Fi movie. Surprised the electrolytic capacitors are hanging in there. Cheers, Mark
You may be able to rent that to a film making company if they ever need a working model. I know there is a demand for old equipment like that in the film industry,prop departments are constantly looking for stuff like that to use in movie making. Its a rare piece of electronics that shows us how things were made robust back then. now days current electronics dont seem to hold up as long. that cooling fan is testament to that.
Love the commercial at the end, made me laugh. Could you do another demo, but explain what you are testing/generating, so we understand what buttons you are pressing, and knobs you are turning. and they function? Keep up the great work!
Man I would love to get my hands on some of that old style tech
I have a number of old Tek scopes out in the storage shed..........I would bet my life I could go out and get one, and it would power right up like it was yesterday it was last used.......wish I was as confident with my new gear...........Tek was a leader in both Electronic Technology and the way a Company should be run.
Technology - in particular, electronics - has come such a long way in such a short period of time. It's difficult to imagine what we will have in say, ten years time.
That's a lot of beautiful Tek green! I love the old Tektronix logo. Greetings from Oregon! :D By the way, my co-worker used to work at Tektronix at the oscilloscope plant.
We had a next door neighbour who worked for Techtronics for over forty years, retiring from there. No doubt she may have worked on your osc. Her name was Liz Ott. Of German stock from South Dakota and Washington. Great score. Was it radioactive at all? :-)
reminds me of the Fallout franchise
when i saw the oscilloscope in the video and then saw the paint color i knew it had to be a tektronix
Awesome build quality! Greetings from Switzerland.
The terminal strips are made of porcelain. Make sure to use silver bearing solder or you may break the bond between the terminal and the porcelain.
I think I prefer the narration to the weird techno music. Keep up the great content.
I am re-watching your videos ( a bit sick atm) and I love these Tektronix scopes! I have a few myself (one being the 4 Ghz model from the mid sixties) They don't make am like that any more!
Toodles!
Paddy
This is fabulous! A Tektronix is a nice thing indeed and a vacuum tube 'scope is a nice thing indeed. A vacuum tube Tektronix is just perfection.