I'm putting together a home hobbyist/enthusiast electronics lab and I've been poking around at Oscilloscopes. It seems like there are some decent deals around at the moment so I'm looking at picking something up but I wanted some advice and input on value for money and what actually makes sense to buy at this stage.
For some context, I'm currently messing around with digital signals in the sub-50MHz range, but I also have a strong tendency to chase shiny ideas and projects right out of the capability of my current equipment (no matter what the project is, not just electronics...
![Grin ;D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xgrin.gif.pagespeed.ic.QVVz6XIT20.png)
), and often it ends up where if I can't do the next thing I lose interest entirely for a while, so I'm looking at something with some leg room to take on more ambitious projects.
Budget is $500-ish, color screen is pretty much a must, and I'm looking for good price to performance. For example I started out looking at older Tek scopes, but it's either $2-300 for a fairly basic 100MHz scope, or over $500 for a 1-200MHz scope with only decent-ish features and probably something failing self-test. So Tek is sort of out, barring a fantastic deal. I'm also not looking for anything I have to crack open just to get working barring very simple parts replacement or cleaning. Project equipment can come later, for now I want something that more or less just works. (like, I don't want to replace every SMD cap on an old Tek scope...)
I've been looking at older Lecroy scopes, since if you're willing to replace some knobs and/or broken plastic bits they seem pretty good value for money, and a great big color screen with customization options, which is great for my poor addled eyeballs and brain.
Specifically I've found some good deals in my area on an LT342 and an LC554DL, the former comes with one PP006 probe and is in great physical condition, the latter comes with itself, a cracked bezel, a broken floppy drive, and two missing knobs. Both are barely within my (rough) budget. Obviously the LC is a lot more Scope, but also no probes and while both are guaranteed to have basic functions I don't have a ton of info in either one. Also I'd have to buy probes to test the LC scope in case it has some issue.
Anyone have any other recommendations for Scopes to look at besides the older Lecroy models, or recommendations on either of those two models at ~$5-600 USD?
Any big used TE sites/vendors to avoid for this sort of thing? (I already know that stuff listed on the Bay is Buyer Beware a lot of the time, but I know what to look for there)
Also, any recommendations for used/budget probes to grab, for a Lecroy or otherwise? Not really looking for active probes at the moment, but recommendations for decent general use passive probes for various applications would be great! I've tried digging through various searched up threads on probes but while there's a lot talking about specific probes, or probes in a specific frequency class, I haven't found much in the way of "this is a good probe/probe class to have on hand"
EDIT: Yes, I've already looked at the options for buying new under about $500 and I'm not really that interested absent a really compelling case that I won't need anything more for the next 5+ years. Yes I know they can be hacked, yes I know they come with probes. I'd rather get something a bit better used, even if it's a bit old now. Besides there's something kind of satisfying about a beefy piece of equipment that you can crack open and fix if needed.