ESR Meter Recommendation

[wkand]

HI:

What make/model of ESR meter does "The Membership" recommend? Are there any good DIY meter projects available?

Thanks!

[ohohyodafarted]

I have the same question as you, and I found this link helpful.

http://www.anatekcorp.com/testequipment/esrcompar.htm

It appears that having an ESR meter is not a cure all, or substitute for replaceing your electrolytics. The opinion of some members here is that even if it tests good now, eventually it will cause you a problem. I guess that is just the nature of the beast. Old dryed out electrolytics days are numbered, so you might as well just replace them, even if it is a pain in the ass. I hate doing it and I guess we all do, but after puting all the hard work into restorting an old set, whats another 2 hours per can to restuff them.

First thing I do when I start out restoring a chassis is to order fresh electrolytics. Once I have them on hand, I don't have any excuse for not re-stuffing the cans. After all, I already spent the money, why just let the caps sit there collecting dust. Might as well put them to work. I think the temptation for all of us is to try and get away with as little work as possible.

I read a post yeaterday and someone said that burning out a transformer due to a shorted can cured him of using the old cans. Now he replaces all of them as standard practice. I think that is good advice, even if it's a lot more work.

[andy]

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[Chad Hauris]

One problem that can occur is slight leakage in old electrolytics that is not enough to cause a noticeable overload but will cause trouble...this may not show up as an abnormal reading on an ESR meter. We use a "Silicon Chip" brand unit.

We have an early 60's VM tube type reel to reel machine we use for dubbing old reels...checked ESR on all electrolytics and the ESR was good. The audio was very weak and we found a cap section on a can had leakage and was loading down the supply to a 12AX7 preamp tube. Since the normal current draw was very low in that part of the circuit, the leakage didn't cause any noticeable damage to resistors but just dropped the voltage very low. All new caps cured the problem.

Never again! We always replace all electrolytics now in tube type equipment and pre-1970's solid state units and don't bother testing. We have always done it in customers equipment and now do it in all my own.
I actually have had surprise failures of old caps several times in tube equipment which had been working OK for years up to that point so that drove the point home for me that old caps only seem to get worse.

[joemama99]

The electronic design capanalyzer 88a available at www.mcmelectronics.com
has always done a good job for us at the repair shop.agreed that it doesnt spot every troublesome one,but it does its job well.

[andy]

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[ChrisW6ATV]

I like the ESR meter made by Creative Electronics around 1980. I just looked on Ebay, and a couple of them recently sold for more than the US$100 original price!

If you are restoring any tube-type electronic device, though, I would replace all of the electrolytics rather than depend on some of the originals remaining in good condition.

[peverett]

I go with replacing the electrolytics(especially with equipment made prior to 1960). I have tried the so-called "reforming" with poor results and would not want to trust power transformers and such to old caps.

To date, I have not had any of my new caps fail. But, just in case, I also install fuses.

[wkand]

Thank you all for the replies! I have uses for the ESR meter outside of antique electronics. I fully agree with all of your comments that it is a waste of time to check ESR on 40-50 YO electrolytics. More modern equipment is another story, and I was curous, since I had seen various ESR meters advertised over the years.

[John Folsom]

The Dick Smith ESR meters are still available:

http://www.flippers.com/esrktmtr.html

I put the kit together and it works well. I also like that it measures resistance from 0.01 ohm to 99 ohm, which makes it useful for tasks other than ESR measurements.