[Tubejunke]

On the topic of checking your caps before installing them, which I think makes a heck of a lot of sense, I wonder what any of you are checking them with. I know that the standard stand alone device is an ESR or LSR meter (can't recollect which is correct). But the versions that I have seen are battery operated and can't test the capacitor under a real world working voltage.

Then there are capacitance functions on just about any junky digital multimeter these days. Same thing; that 9V battery isn't able to do any real world loading. On lager value caps a good old Simpson analog meter at least used to be a half decent way of checking them (back when techs knew how to use a real meter) with the resistance function, but even that meter is powered by I think a few C cells. Now the VTVM (vacuum tube volt meter) versions obviously had to plug into the wall, but I really don't know what the difference is in what EMF is applied in a resistance test; probably not much. They only plug into a wall outlet to power the tubes.

I think that whatever device that can be obtained that would properly check a cap would be a very valuable tool for anyone doing what we are doing, or any other bench work for that matter.