The shock effect of a terminal-peak sawtooth of acceleration obtained by a drop onto a lead pellet has been investigated experimentally using the shock spectrum as the criterion of severity. It is shown that this spectrum obtained by analysis of the acceleration-time data can be made to approximate closely over a wide frequency range that obtained theoretically for an ideal sawtooth. The smoothness of the spectrum which results from the extreme asymmetry. of the pulse shape makes the sawtooth particularly attractive standard pulse shape for shock test in the laboratory.