Worry that you should be looking for a Keithley 2000 instead?
bwahahaaaaaa . best joke i've heard in a long time. if you would have said a 2001 or 2002 i'd have replied : no contest. the 2000 is not really that great of a machine..
Hmm, both the HP and K2K seem like fine machines with similar new and use prices, similar stability and specs. I picked the K2k because of the scanner card option, but hey, if the the Playskool bumpers tip the scales the other way for you, that's cool -- I wouldn't mind some bumpers to protect the instrument, my furniture and the top of my foot from damage.
That's not it. The Keithleys are plagued by bad caps in the power supplies. These things are timebombs. the electrolytics leak taking out the entire supply , eating half the board , shorting out the bridges which blow up , taking out the transformer after it has sent 25 volts AC up the ass of every single chip on the motherboard. MY count stands at 7 of machines that were in that state ...
There's no schematics for the 2001 or 2002. They are a contraption from old obsolete technology that is overly complicated.
Open a 2000 and a 34401 side by side. the 34401 is a schoolbook example of proper engineering. The layout is clean , simple. The Keithley is a hairball.
Don't get me wrong , 34401's have their share of problems.
- The tantalum cap is well known ( any engineer still using those should be barred of ever designing anything ever again and branded on his forehead with the text 'Tantalum User'. Tantalums are a PEST) I lost the count of how many times i had to fix a machine or instrument and the cause was a fried tantalum. The only good Tantalum is one that is not fitted into anything i own.
- The swithc is also known
- the 2512 resistor ladder next to the front or rear jacks can crack loose in a range of serial numbers
- the cpu on the front panel can explode if tone of the VFD drivers calls it quits and commits harakiri in a fiery fireball.
There is another tantalum in the True RMS section that can kill that one off as well.
I can fix 34401's almost blind. The faults are simple and easily repairable ( if you are into instrument repair that is... ) The keithley on the otherhand ... documentation is inexistent and its full of handselected matched crap that is unobtainium. I bought all my 34401's ( i got 8 ) as parts units. They have all been repaired , have all gone through calibration are all in factory spec.
This handsesecting stuff may have been the bees knees in the 50's and 60's but in this day and age there is no need for that. The software and algorithms in these machines are so powerful they can compensate.
THe keitlheys are simply made with old technology and they need a massive load of parts to get it to behave. Agilent on the other hand simply fabs their own custom chip, laser trims it in the factory and , since all is integrated, the drift is much more under control than in the massive circuit board with 1000 parts..
Nope. Keithley was great , but now it runs on outdated technology. They havent released anything new in years... their last multimeter update predates the 34401....