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It's a little strange being asked in 2015 to write a review of a product from circa 1983, but I was a design engineer in that era and at the time the 7000 series of Tektronix oscilloscopes were generally regarded as some of the best to have, well designed and well built, long lasting and reliable, but priced accordingly. They also came with a plethora of versatile plugins, and even a couple that could change the 'scope into a curve tracer or spectrum analyzer. They and the follow-up 24xx series were the last of the Tek repairable 'scopes that mostly used through hole components, and for which service manuals with schematics are readily available, unlike modern DSOs which are pretty much unrepairable in the event of failure. Fast forward to late 2015 and I just bought myself a Tek 7834 for these reasons, but now at a very reasonable price. The one I received is in excellent condition and fully operational. I needed a 'scope to observe rise and fall times on kHz repetition pulses a few nanoseconds wide. You might ask why I chose a 400MHz storage 'scope rather than the 1GHz 7104. It is true I would have preferred the non-storage 7104 with its own MCP 'inherent storage' screen, but good ones are usually over $1000 even on ebay and there is always the issue of whether the MCP screen is worn out, as they degrade from use over time. Even better would have been a modern DSO with a 5Gs/s rate, but they cost thousands of $$$. The reason I bought the 400MHz 7834 is, with the addition of a 7S14 plugin (usually around $250 on ebay), any 7000 series 'scope can be converted to a 1GHz sampling 'scope, and when combined with a storage 'scope, even relatively low repetition rate signals (100s of Hz) can be captured. By itself the 7834 struggles to display such signals on a 1ns timebase, not because the 7B10 timebase can't trigger on it, but instead because the signal is so short there is insufficient intensity, even on VAR storage, to observe it. Coupled with the 7S14 it's another story. A great webpage extolling the virtues of a 7834 coupled with a 7S14 can be found by Googling for "Measured with a 7S14 Sampling Unit in a 7834 Storage Oscilloscope" (about halfway down). A downside of a 7000 series 'scope is you really need to know about oscilloscopes to get the most out of them - the basic models (7834 being one) don't come with DSO cursors or measurement readouts and instead it's down to working out the spacing between graticule lines for measurements, archaic and time-consuming, and perhaps better left to the hobbyist with more time on their hands. The 7834 is also an analogue 'scope, which means when only one channel is used, there is no sampling and the entire signal is displayed, unlike DSOs which only display the sampled portions of the signal and can suffer from aliasing leading to false waveforms being displayed (features a 7S14 can also introduce). Taking this into consideration, along with reliability, maintainability and low cost - make this a 'scope good low cost way of accurately observing high speed signals. Nowadays I am retired and cost is a significant factor. I can't afford to have my equipment calibrated, so I must do it myself, and with the 7000 series this is achievable. If you want a good quality reliable 'scope and can handle the extra effort required, and are willing to spend the extra time necessary to learn how to get the best out of the instrument, the 7000 series of oscilloscopes are an excellent range of tools and great value for money. Better still, get a DSO too (I have a Rigol) and you have the best of both worlds.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
7834 is the best value analog oscilloscope in my personal opinion. It have sufficient bandwidth for almost anything unless you want 500MHz or 1GHz real time probing. 7834 has smaller spit size than the non storage 7904 and 7104, which helps looking at small noises with sharper trace. The analog storage also enable use of many slow plugins. It does still have drawbacks. There seems to be a thermal balancing issue with using differential comparators, so that made the comparison function not quite useful anymore. (or may be my unit is out of tune on thermal balancing)
Verified purchase: Yes
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