Hi,
I used to be a bench tech years ago and now am getting back into repairing amps and radios as a hobby.
My question is, what's the best thing to buy as far as a Signal Generator for signal tracing?
Should I put a kit together that you may know of or is there a really cool inexpensive one that you could fill me in on?
I'd also like to use it for injecting 455khz signal into an IF stage (or am I thinking of another piece of equipment I need).
Thanks in advance.

 

You can build a simple 2-transistor battery powered oscillator/probe into the body of a used hi-liter marker pen.

You can also build an audio probe using a simple one or two transistor amplifier driving earphones.

For a 455kHz oscillator, look into 455kHz SAW filter/oscillator.

 

what kind of accuracy do you want? will a dial work, or would you want digital? what are the requirements of the radios you are working on? like frequency range and such?
I got a couple of wavetek 3000 series generators off ebay a whiloe back and with a little fixing up, I now have a very nice generator that goes up to 512 mhz or so, with both am and fm, and calibrated output in microvolts.

 

what kind of accuracy do you want? will a dial work, or would you want digital? what are the requirements of the radios you are working on? like frequency range and such?
I got a couple of wavetek 3000 series generators off ebay a whiloe back and with a little fixing up, I now have a very nice generator that goes up to 512 mhz or so, with both am and fm, and calibrated output in microvolts.

A dial would work fine.
But for the price they sell used, I can get a new one for just a few dollars more.
I was wondering if there was some newer thing out there that was even handier.
Maybe even having more features.