If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It’s Probably an Adscope

Unlike some of our competitors, we believe that performance still trumps aesthetics when it comes to a pro-grade stethoscope (well, any stethoscope for that matter). While we get how important style and personalization have become in selecting a scope, ultimately, a stethoscope’s true worth is based on its acoustic capabilities and build quality -- and not on a clever name for a royal blue tube.

So we start by engineering our clinician and cardiology series scopes to be among the best-performing acoustic scopes on the market. And to ensure each and every one meets those demanding standards, we do things FEW of our competitors can claim.

As we wrote in an earlier blog, in order to take our quality to the next level, we moved final production of our Adscope® line of premium stethoscopes to the U.S. last year, making us one of just two or three manufacturers of stethoscopes assembled here.  Performing the all-important final manufacturing steps has enabled us to not only control quality like never before, but meet almost any specialized requirement or demand spike.

Even before that process change, we developed procedures to randomly test our scopes on a custom-built acoustic test machine to ensure they meet our demanding performance standards. This machine conducts an acoustic transfer test by measuring the sound level (db) of tones generated at a variety of critical frequencies as they move from the chestpiece to the eartips. By establishing key performance benchmarks for each model, we ensure every batch of components is as good as the last.

But we weren’t satisfied with random testing. We wanted to develop an in-line process that would enable us to quickly test EVERY SINGLE Adscope® as it was being built. We commissioned an engineering consultant to develop a simplified version of our acoustic test machine to do just that.

The challenge was to develop a machine that allows rapid setup and operates in a relatively noisy workshop. The clever solution was to build a fixture that generates a single frequency relevant to scope performance but easily differentiated from background noise. Dual-receiving microphones detect this generated tone at each earpiece and a red light/green light output displays the results. This testing ensures we deliver a scope with a reliable acoustic pathway throughout the entire instrument. We now test every one of the clinician and cardiology models we assemble in the U.S.

All the more reason why you should compare the acoustic performance of an Adscope® to any other stethoscope you can buy. You’ll discover there’s really no comparison at all.