Multimeters

[umcoo]

Hello 

I'm looking to pick up a multimeter, just a cheap one that'll do all i need for stompboxes and such.  Theres plenty on ebay for around £3-5, but will these suffice or do i need to spend £15+ on a decent one?

Thanks guys!

[Filament]

If you're just planning real light duty work with it then the inexpensive units you see from sellers in Hong Kong etc should do the job.  Don't count on them to have a lot of useful functions or to last too long.  I see that you haven't posted much so I'm assuming that you are new to building stompboxes.  If that's the case it may be wise to buy an inexpensive meter for the time being and buy a new one later if you find that you begin to build more pedals or larger projects in the future.

I'd say at the very lease you'll want a meter that has a continuity feature on it.  That is in addition to resistance and voltage.

Hope that helps.

[demonstar]

Since you are in the U.K. check out Farnell. That's where I got mine. Free next working day delivery on all orders over £20. So have a look there...

"http://uk.farnell.com/"

[dschwartz]

yesterday i bought a nice DMM for about 20 bucks, it measures all the typical stuff, plus capacitance , temperature, and frequency..

i´m intrigued by the frequency measuring...it says 200khz ..so i assume that´s the max frequency that can be detected..
is this feature usable? for example, if i plug the probes to the otlet, it will measure 50-60 Hz??
and if i test the output of an opamp or so, will it measure the freq of a sustained note or background noise?

[newperson]

where did you get a capacitance meter for $20?

[drewl]

Well that's what a frequency counter does.
Not that I need it for pedals, but I have an 8 digit one staring me in the face here in the lab at work.
For most projects the one in a meter will do just fine.
comes in handy for measuring power supply ripple/noise/hum.
Trying to measure the note of a guitar is interesting as it will fluctuate a bit and even pick up the harmonics on occasion.
Ever scope a guitar signal?
looks cool.

[dschwartz]

where did you get a capacitance meter for $20?

I bought this one for cheap in Iquique, a tax free province here in Chile..

http://www.eelabtools.com/servlet/Detail?no=87

it looks nice

Well that's what a frequency counter does.
Not that I need it for pedals, but I have an 8 digit one staring me in the face here in the lab at work.
For most projects the one in a meter will do just fine.
comes in handy for measuring power supply ripple/noise/hum.
Trying to measure the note of a guitar is interesting as it will fluctuate a bit and even pick up the harmonics on occasion.
Ever scope a guitar signal?
looks cool.

i don´t have a scope. but i have seen guitar signal through one.. cool indeed.
my new DMM has only 3 digits..maybe it won´t measure freq´s below 1Khz

[drewl]

sure it will, usually 20hz to in your case 200khz.
Accuracy usually drops above 10 or 20khz but for troubleshooting it will be fine.

[umcoo]

thanks for the replies guys and gals!  yes, i am new to DIY'ing and I'm looking to get my tool collection up to scratch before i get stuck into builds.  Just don't want to buy a really cheap one and have it crap out on me, or give me dodgy readings!  Thanks again