Three observations about #VarianAgilent in this, their twilit era:
1.
You can still get a lot of the boards professionally repaired, at least last
year you could, from the VNMRS/400MR era. (Inova and earlier, quite possibly
not.) Best case scenario, you send your board to them, within 2 weeks you
get it back, good as new (aka working, with the original likely future failure
points)! Yes it costs money, but so does a broken spectrometer. It's very good
value for money to use their depot repair service.
2.
It's amazing what good values you can get on eBay for used Varian probes.
I've bought a number of them in the last two years for less than $700 apiece,
some much less, from sellers who definitely are not in a position to test
them, but every one of the probes has shimmed in, and been straightforward
to calibrate. In addition to what you might call garden variety probes, there
are some WEIRD ones out there, which must have been special orders. I wish
I could find out who originally bought them, what their thought process was,
and what they paid at the time! But that information is probably in some
landfill on a USB stick now, just not the same USB stick with the $500 million
in bitcoin, or the same landfill.
3.
Speaking of the never-released detailed schematics and other service related
documents, those could also be in a Bay Area landfill, but there's a darkside
to it. Google "Ken Kezeor Agilent" for a glimpse at how far Agilent would go
against a former employee over those files—in short, years of legal drama,
continuing well after the NMR division had been shut down anyway. Ken has
since died.
David VanderVelde
Manager, Liquids NMR Facility, Caltech
davidv_at_caltech.edu
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Received on Tue Mar 04 2025 - 09:28:25 MST