Voltage probes and probing
Voltage probes for your oscilloscope are essential to every facet of work within electronics. You need quality probes you can rely on, you will be needing more than one kind of probes, and you need to take good care of them. This was underlined by the late Jim Williams in the Linear Technology Application Note 47, entitled "High Speed Amplifier Techniques", Appendix E: "The author regards the breakage of oscilloscope probes as the lowest possible human activity. The sole exception to this condemnation is poor quality probes, which should be destroyed as soon as their deficiencies are discovered." The application note is a fine read, and also includes a destillation of Tektronix' "ABCs of Probes". The lastest edition of this ABC is available here: https://download.tek.com/document/02_ABCs-of-Probes-Primer.pdf
A standard passive probe can get you far, but do not waste time on mediocre models with too high capacitive load and limited bandwidth. Get a pair of 1:10 probes with a bandwidth comparable to that of your oscilloscope. Having said that, even the best standard passive probe is not cut out for each and every task in the shop. You may also want to enrich your collection with an active FET probe with small geometry to validate high-speed digital electronics, for instance, or a current probe to check out power supplies, LED/laser drivers and the like. Other nice-to-have items include a differential probe and a passive wideband probe for 50 Ohm inputs. A few probes are presented below (to be elaborated):
Voltage probes for your oscilloscope are essential to every facet of work within electronics. You need quality probes you can rely on, you will be needing more than one kind of probes, and you need to take good care of them. This was underlined by the late Jim Williams in the Linear Technology Application Note 47, entitled "High Speed Amplifier Techniques", Appendix E: "The author regards the breakage of oscilloscope probes as the lowest possible human activity. The sole exception to this condemnation is poor quality probes, which should be destroyed as soon as their deficiencies are discovered." The application note is a fine read, and also includes a destillation of Tektronix' "ABCs of Probes". The lastest edition of this ABC is available here: https://download.tek.com/document/02_ABCs-of-Probes-Primer.pdf
A standard passive probe can get you far, but do not waste time on mediocre models with too high capacitive load and limited bandwidth. Get a pair of 1:10 probes with a bandwidth comparable to that of your oscilloscope. Having said that, even the best standard passive probe is not cut out for each and every task in the shop. You may also want to enrich your collection with an active FET probe with small geometry to validate high-speed digital electronics, for instance, or a current probe to check out power supplies, LED/laser drivers and the like. Other nice-to-have items include a differential probe and a passive wideband probe for 50 Ohm inputs. A few probes are presented below (to be elaborated):
