The success of an Aerospace Testing program hinges on the accuracy of measurements on mechanical systems. The sensors and cables required to obtain these critical measurements must often operate in extreme conditions during tests that are complex and infeasible to repeat. It is therefore critical for test designers to ensure their data acquisition systems receive analog signals of key measurands that have not been corrupted by the measurement system. The inclusion of properly designed analog signal conditioning instrumentation can provide this assurance, minimizing the risk of compromised data from an expensive test. In this presentation, we draw on decades of experience designing measurement systems for aerospace test programs to explain the most common sources of signal corruption and loss – effects that can rarely be corrected in sampled data via DSP. We then highlight how a state-of-the-art analog front end can mitigate these effects, ensuring test signals are clean, free of artifacts, and ready for sampling and analysis.