Joule Thief behavior question.

[Legalizeshemp420]

Oh my, please tell me where you are finding those prices.  When I look online, most of them are in the $600 to $5000 range.  I found a few in the $250 area, but not too many and they are not good for 60mhz or higher.

Ebay and I grabbed my 20mhz analog for 34 dollars plus 25 shipping (kinda bulky with a little weight to it) and it had all the original items + manual + original bags and box.  20mhz is fine but to really home in on some of the JTs I was working on I would need 60-100mhz and those can be had for 50-150.  Mind you it took me 3 weeks of a lot of bids and I finally grabbed mine via a snipe bid 3 seconds before the end.

[ddredar]

Ebay and I grabbed my 20mhz analog for 34 dollars plus 25 shipping (kinda bulky with a little weight to it) and it had all the original items + manual + original bags and box.  20mhz is fine but to really home in on some of the JTs I was working on I would need 60-100mhz and those can be had for 50-150.  Mind you it took me 3 weeks of a lot of bids and I finally grabbed mine via a snipe bid 3 seconds before the end.

Looks like I will have to dust off the old ebay account login ans start searching. 

Think I'll go play some Planetside2 before I dive into that search.

[ddredar]

Analog or digital?  I personally would recommend a used analog 60mhz, or above, for 50-100 dollars.  Get a 100mhz analog scope for 75-100 and that is all you would need for most JT work.

So, why do you recommend analog over digital?  I'm old enough to know that in many cases analog is better than digital.  I just wanted to know your reasoning for this recommendation.

And if anyone has a different opinion, I'd like to know the reasoning behind that too.

[Legalizeshemp420]

So, why do you recommend analog over digital?  I'm old enough to know that in many cases analog is better than digital.  I just wanted to know your reasoning for this recommendation.

And if anyone has a different opinion, I'd like to know the reasoning behind that too.

For quirky circuits like this I just think it handles it better for the price range we mere mortals can afford.  Have US $2k+?  If so then go digital but be sure to get a persistence vision model.

I'm an Analog type guy to begin with as I prefer analog for certain things since we aren't on quantum computers just yet.  0/1 and that is it but for an analog it isn't that simple since it can be off, on, and all sorts of states in between.  Some will argue in favor of digital and the one thing I will give digital is all of the extras thrown in it.  You get a frequency counter, a FFT, and math functions out the wazoo that the poor PURE analog loses against.  We also have the digital sampling that can get in the way and give you headaches on something like a RIGOL 1102E.

For me, personally, I have my 20mhz analog scope and love it but it has its limits due to being 20mhz but I want one more scope before I die and that should do it.  About 300mhz 5G/s persistence vision digital with quad channel.  Know the price of such a beast?  Last time I looked around 10K-15k-20K US dollars.  I think I will take my 36 dollar Analog for now.  

[TinselKoala]

I prefer analog kit myself, but if I was going to buy a "first scope" today on a limited budget, and I had the computer already, I would probably get this one:
Hantek 6022BE
http://www.theoscilloscopeshop.com/item-hantek-6022be-pc-based-usb-digital-storag-oscilloscope-2channels-20mhz-48msa-s_221270085136_US_Hantek.html

Comes with probes and software for under 100 USD.

They also have a 40MHz version for a little more money.

Somebody gave me an old Link DSO that is very similar, and I had the perfect laptop for it, a ThinkPad 600e with parallel port. It is very useful around my lab, because I mostly work with low frequency stuff-- and I had no real use for the laptop any more, so it's a double bargain. I have three analog scopes too; one very popular and inexpensive analog scope is the Tektronix 2213a, a 60MHz scope with some nice delayed timebase features.
Watch out for Atten scopes... I don't trust them.

Almost any scope at all is better than no scope at all, though.