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Old 06-15-2016, 06:03 PM
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maxhifi maxhifi is offline
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New multimeter?

Bought one of the radio shack sale items a couple years ago, and it just failed on me. Now it reads half of the applied voltage, and other functions are all off too. Can anyone suggest a budget replacement which can do capacitance and frequency fairly accurately? Don't really need a Fluke, one rung down would suffice.
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Old 06-15-2016, 07:04 PM
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What I'd do is get a few Harbor Freight freebee DMMs to roast (we all kill DMMs periodically), a $15 ebay chinese ESR/component tester (they are great!*), and a good frequency counter.

*They measure R (and often higher R than DMMs can),L (useful for replacing peaking coils), and C, ESR (which is great for Soild State cap trouble shooting), and test transistors and diodes.

Knock on wood, I've never smoked my cap tester or frequency counter. I got a cheap used frequency counter that has a 200V input, and use it with a 10X scope probe...It seems immune to damage in that configuration.
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Old 06-15-2016, 08:15 PM
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Gonna get one of those component testers in the mail, a good find. Are they accurate?
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Old 06-15-2016, 11:50 PM
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They seem to be reasonably to very accurate with some small exceptions. ESR on caps under ~1uF should be disregarded. Resistors ~1M and higher will often read a pF value caps if left in circuit....Also if a good size cap is in circuit somewhat lower resistances will be ignored and the cap will be discovered instead...Easy to deal with by cutting a leg free from the circuit. Some inductors with low resistance (high Q) and inductance near the edge of range will be confused as resistors. Lytic caps that are leaky below ~9V will read as diodes. Once you learn the mild quirks it is a highly useful piece of gear...Heck it is useful even without knowing the quirks; it just makes you pause and scratch your head when you find one.
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