Following [USER=10249]@sp5it[/USER] - lead...
The real tools are the radios themselves.
Always good to have several receivers around - ones you can tinker and learn to trust and know the "quirks" they will have with oscillators circuits and receiver noise and the scratchy sounds of old rheostats "tuning in" on signals.
Once you become familiar with your equipment - the SA (Spectrum Analyzer), or the Signal Tracer Or the Oscilloscopes, Many, including myself - find the RECEIVER your most familiar with - is the one that becomes Your major tool you use to help you "align" your other equipment and radios to, it becomes your reference - for your references.
So, to me the Oscilloscope is a good backup to your ears - Spectrum Analysis is more for those whom have to find problems that go beyond typical Oscilloscope and Signal Tracing - and are more for those willing to show their "expertise" if not their pocketbook - to others for their own EGO.
As a Ham operator, you are responsible for your own equipment and emissions from them, so the choices are up to you - but you don't have to sell the Farm to get the latest and greatest.
Sadly, though, the more "fun times" in kit building and self-help/taught "Heath kit" as well as other homebrews - are rare and discretes and support for them are rarer now due to the flood of overseas marketplace crap being dumped onto our shores. Preassembled metal cases with foil backed cardboard to hold SMD components smaller than the many of the letters typed in this message
So, this ties back to original premise of this post.
You are responsible for your own equipment - you now have a license (so to speak) to become its care-giver - you become the one that lives (some of - not all) your life thru the equipment you use to contact others. So, these pieces, then become more than simple tools and equipment - they become a part of you.