Preamble Instruments
Preamble Instruments was founded by Al Schamel, Tim Ruvo, Bruce Hofer, Bob Metzler, and John Addis, all former Tektronix employees.
According to John Addis,
The original idea to create a company to manufacture a stand-alone amplifier able to measure switching power supply voltages came from Al Schamel. Al had designed switching power supplies and knew the difficulties of measuring the saturation voltage of a switching transistor immediately after its collector-emitter voltage might be in excess of 250V. The saturation voltage was critical to the switching supply's efficiency. Tim Ruvo was a manufacturing manager at Tektronix whom Al turned to for manufacturing advice.
In early 1994, Al and Tim approached Bruce Hofer, Tektronix designer of audio distortion measurement instruments and founder of Audio Precision, Inc, and Bob Metzler a Tektronix marketing manager, both of whom were looking for investment opportunities. Bruce and Bob liked Al and Tim's proposal, but insisted on someone with design experience. They suggested John Addis who had recently retired from Tektronix. Al, Tim, Bruce, and Bob each had 20% ownership, with Al and Tim's ownership being the value of their work, sweat equity. Addis accepted 20%, half sweat equity and half in hourly wage. Work started in mid 1994.
Preamble Instruments went from a small start-up to eventually employing 28 people. Products included the 1820, 1822, 1850, 1855, 1820A, 1822A, 1850A and 1855A differential amplifiers and several active and passive differential probes. (The 1800 series A versions had μP-controlled operation designed by Stan Sasaki and oven heater that only ran with power on). The 1850, 1850A, 1855, 1855A (introduced in 1996) used input circuitry based on the M377. The design used all discrete circuitry and therefore could not quite match the 11A33 for thermals, but its 16 V overload and common mode dynamic range, true differential calibrated offset, along with 10 MHz, 1 MHz, and 100 kHz bandwidth-limit filters made it very popular. LeCroy Corporation bought Preamble Instruments in October 1997. [...] LeCroy is now known as TELEDYNE LECROY.
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People affiliated with Preamble Instruments
| Name | Birth date | Death date | Countries | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruce Hofer | 1948 | Oregon State University • Tektronix • Audio Precision • Preamble Instruments | ||
| John Addis | 1941-03-30 | USA | MIT • Tektronix • Preamble Instruments |
Products by Preamble Instruments
| Model | Class | Series | Description | Introduced | Discontinued |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preamble DA1855 | Amplifier | 100 MHz differential amplifier | (?) | (?) |