Lodestar AG 2601A

Hi folks -

Wondering if anyone has any experience with the Lodestar AG 2601A? I'm in the market for a generator and am considering this one. I will be mostly working on tube guitar amplifiers, hifi amps and studio recording gear.  I'm trying to find something that will work well without being prohibitively expensive. I'm not doing commercial work for recording studios, just mostly fixing up my own gear and the occasional item for a friend or whatever.

I'm also open to other suggestions of course.

Many, many thanks as always -

Gus. 

GussyLoveridge said:

Wondering if anyone has any experience with the Lodestar AG 2601A?

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I've used one for years (different brand but same gear). It does what it claims.
The cons are THD is too high to evaluate THD of most HiFi/pro equipment, except  guitar amps, and the attenuator is quite coarse. However, it's useful as long as you don't want super-duper precision when evaluating gain and S/N.
I used it mainly in production for checking the tuning of L-C circuits and self-resonance of speaker cabinets.
You can see them on eBay at about $100. That's a valuable piece of equipment.

Hi thanks so much for your reply. I ended up purchasing a Tek CFG250 for about $60 USD. So far so good it seems to be working just fine. Though occasionally it seems to show a phase shifted version of itself on my oscilloscope as a kind of  back ground noise thing. Not sure what that's all about.

GussyLoveridge said:

Hi thanks so much for your reply. I ended up purchasing a Tek CFG250 for about $60 USD. So far so good it seems to be working just fine. Though occasionally it seems to show a phase shifted version of itself on my oscilloscope as a kind of  back ground noise thing. Not sure what that's all about.

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That is a common artefact due to erratic triggering. For a number of reasons, the detector may have difficulties identifying the desired trigger signal. Very common on noisy signals, but also when the wrong trigger function is selected.

Hi again - Sorry for the late reply. I appreciate the help. Is there a way to mitigate this?

GussyLoveridge said:

Hi again - Sorry for the late reply. I appreciate the help. Is there a way to mitigate this?

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There may be a fault in the 'scope, such a intermittent contact, noisy pot, leaky capacitor... but it happens even with a brand new one. By definition, noise is erratic, and statistically it may reach a sufficiently high amplitude to fool the detector. You may try all the trigger options, DC, AC, Positive or negative slope, HF (usually a high pass filter on the trigger).

Awesome will do. Thanks again!