Fixed my HP 339A distortion measurement set- now what?

[imaradiostar]

It was pretty simple really- about 50 cotton tipped wood swabs and a bunch of deoxit and I cleaned all of the green grunge off of the wafer switches inside. It now reads .0015 % THD reading its own internal oscillator. That's in line with what I'd expect from the specs on the device.

I read the thd of an HP 33120A and it's slightly higher but again, in line with the HP specs.

NOW what do I do with it? I guess I'll be able to find out the TRUE clean output of my projects now. Maybe I'll get a read on the giant Edcor output transformer I got back around Christmas in combination with some KT120's.

Jamie

[loudthud]

Run a output power test on a guitar amp and crank it up past clipping to 10% distortion. Take an RMS reading of the output voltage and compute power. That's where Fender rates their amps. Are you discusted?

[imaradiostar]

Hah, I guess it all depends how an amp sounds at 10% distortion. I'd imagine as guitar players we're pretty used to things being dirty. I do think it'll be interesting to see how clean some various designs are. I can run the 339a output into a computer running fft software and get a sense for what kind of harmonic content is added by various circuits.

The 339a should come in handy if I ever build the bass amp, hifi amp, or mic preamps I've considered.

JT