so that worked perfectly... and yes I used an anti-static mat as well. zero static issue!
SeanB and Specmaster thanks!
in case anyone might be thinking it was a non-issue...I knew this was a potential problem as the person had shipped me a wrong item earlier, A tv sweep gen which was wrapped the same way. I didn't give much notice to how it was wrapped as it was gonna be returned and swapped out .. but it turned out the item was worth less then the shipping would have cost so he told me to just keep it. upon tiring to unwrap it I was getting shocks from the metal case and my hair on my arm was standing on end as I unwrapped the cling wrap.. so it was obviously normal static cling wrap not the anti-static stuff ... by the time i unwrapped the sweep gen he had already shipped the curve tracer so it was too late to ask him not to pack it like that.
I did contact the seller and explained why not to do that, but it seems he had 30 years of experience doing it this way and claimed never to have had an issue.
don't get me wrong, they are an excellent eBay seller and corrected the miss shipped item immediately so not complaining about the seller. Id just not have used static cling wap myself.
I've seen the pink wrap on electronics before, and have occasionally used it.. but never plain static cling wrap. I've mostly used the anti-static bags or the conductive bags myself.
... these pieces of equipment came from an age where static sensitive components were hardly every used in kit equipment.
They knew why
yea I kinda was thinking the same thing, so before I got to concerned I looked at the schematic and saw a 7400 series device and a couple of 741 opamps and a 301 opamp and 3 small signal bipolar transistors that are no longer being manufactured..... so thought id better be safe than sorry. not that the circuit is that complex to troubleshoot. I didn't wanna add any more problems to it then it might already have. The device came in as is / untested condition, so if it works 100% that's a bonus, but I am not expecting it to work perfectly.. but still, no point in adding problems.