That is an interesting experience with the ESR tester. I have only used ones with an analog meter, marked with a scale in ohms as well as minimum values for "good" capacitors of various sizes. So, a 1000uF part could read nearly full scale but it would be bad on such a scale.

maybe this one had an ohms reading and since i did not have the directions or specs on caps, maybe it was showing them as questionable.... need to learn before i make snap judgements!

When I spent my days troubleshooting, my ESR meter cap checker was the best thing since bottled beer. While it was not 100% accurate, it saved so much time it was worth the occasional false good readings.

Ours paid for itself many times over. It was the one piece of test equipment that never let us down either! 80 bucks to buy, and it saved hundreds of hours of troubleshooting.

Cheers,

The few times I got a "false good" reading with my ESR meter at work was when I happened to have a capacitor in a circuit with a low-value resistor in parallel, or in a case where several capacitors were in parallel and not all of them were bad.

I talked with the person who showed me how to use the ESR......they did not know how to use one correctly!
Live and learn!
I think I will have to get one

This ESR/capacitor tester has generally been well received for its operation (simply FYI)...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Peak-Atlas-E...item19f571cef2

Along with this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blue-ESR-Cap...item3ce5ca8382

Tom (PK)