Show your Multimeter!

[Cubdriver]

My trio. Fluke 8021B, Fluke 87, and Heathkit V-5 VTVM (Yes, it works well even though it looks battered and bruised)

Guess which one is my "go to" multimeter?

The VTVM!

-Pat

[AF6LJ]

*chuckle*

Seriously, I have two Fluke 77's that are probably 20 years old, work great, are still in cal, and I see no need to replace them.
(and yes, that's really one of my meters in the photo)

There is a man who knows the way to a woman's heart.

[AF6LJ]

The meter on the left is a Simpson PSM-4 complete with high voltage probe, The meter works well, except on high ohms ranges since the 22.5V battery is no long available. It came to me with the cracked face. Since I have had it it has been down a flight of concrete stairs, and no additional damage was incurred. The meter to the right of that is the RCA Volt Ohmyst. well known in the repair business of years gone by, and this model was the first VTVM I used (early high school, don't ask how long ago that was )


The Heathkit IM-18 is shown here, one of these was the first VTVM I owned, not this one, the one I built met its demise when it fell off a bench shelf and hit the concrete floor. On the far right you will see a DMM it's a Beckman RMS-225, Yes Beckman this one is a beta version of the meter Beckman built before they were bought out by Wavetech. Since Beckman was headquartered here in SanDiego they went looking for places their meters would see use in a less than a Lab environment, so they showed up at the two way radio shop I worked at and gave out a half dozen meters. So for six months we were visited by someone from their QA department to inspect the meters and ask how they worked. I can attest to the fact that meter has fallen off the roof of a tow truck and two trash trucks while checking antenna mounts for shorts. It was even accidentally (really) kicked across the shop floor by an installer. After the evaluation period we were given the meters.


This is the meter I built to replace my IM-18 that met it's demise. The Heath IM-5228 has been a loyal servent since the early 1980s.


We can't forget the HP-3478A that sees quite a bit of use on low volgate gear. I picked this up at a hamfest back in 2010 for $85.00US. I thought it was a decent deal, and it has served me well.

For those who are interested; the current project here is the repair of a Heathkit SB-110 six meter transceiver. It works just poorly, I have a short list of parts that need to be replaced before moving on and attempting alignment. In its day it was a first class radio for weak signal VHF work. Now it's time to put all that stuff away and get on with reading posts.

[Cubdriver]

I recognisize that frequency counter!


Here are some of mine:

The 3440 that I recently re-capped and cleaned up.


A 3439 that worked for a bit when I first got it but then got flakey; it doubtless needs recapping at least.


A pair of 3470X's from eBuy; both need work (caps, etc.), but they're low on the priority list.  I need to find a manual for the display section at least, and they don't seem to come up often.


Workhorse handhelds; the 77-II I bought new 20+ years ago now IIRC, and I snagged a pair of the 27FMs from our favorite wallet-draining website a few years back when the .mil apparently surplussed a bunch of them.  Got them for less than $50/pop with cases, leads and HV probes.  The second is squirreled away upstairs and not readily at hand.


The ugly looking 3490A on the bottom came from Apex Electronics; I got it when I was out that way this past August.  To my great surprise, it fired right up and is accurate to within a few mV compared to the Fluke 8845A at work.  Other than a slightly dim digit it seems pretty healthy.  The prettier one on top was bought non working for parts on the 'bay, my intent being if I can't fix it to swap enclosure parts with the working one to make it look less like it's been through the war.






The 3456 is another eBuy parts/not working unit I got for a song; haven't yet dug into it to asses its condition yet.  The frequency counter beneath it is another fix-it project; I think there's something amiss in the front end.


This pair of 3440As also came from Apex; according to their property tag stickers they were delivered to Bendix 50 years ago in August - both have asset stickers on the back dated 8/65.  I'm assuming that the caps are dried out.  The display on one counts randomly; alas the second will likely end up a parts mule as it's missing a couple of circuit boards, so I haven't powered it up or swapped boards about at this point.


And last but not least, another purchase from the auction site.  This is the meter I used in high school, one of the labs being to draw the damned thing along with its schematic and make up a bill of materials for it as well, with component sources and prices.  It sucked at the time, but little did I know that the knowledge would come in handy 20 years down the road.  It of course had a dead, corroded battery in it, so there's some cleaning to be done, but it otherwise works well.



I have some more old HP boat anchors that were recently acquired from an estate, but they're not yet fit for public consumption - they spent ten years in a musty basement. 

In case it wasn't evident, I have a thing for nixie displays, and to a slightly lesser extent the little dot-matrix-y LED ones HP used to use.

-Pat

ETA 2 pics of 3490A and work Fluke voltage reading comparisons.

[FlyingHacker]

Like most of us, I have a number, but here is a video about the latest addition to the line, a Fluke 8100B Nixie Tube meter. I just got this going with the help of Tautech and Paul Moir (see  repair thread here : https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/nixie-tube-fluke-8100b-dmm/ )



https://youtu.be/bOKkrFakrys

[Rolo]

Here are my two multimeters. Fluke 175 and a Gossen Metrahit 14S.
They complement each other in functions, the Fluke has capacitance and frequency measurement, the Gossen temperature measurement.
One thing is missing in this combo and that's a delta function. The Gossen only has this in the low ohm range to compensate for probe lead resistance, wich is a nice feature by the way.
So one day I will upgrade to a meter that has delta, for now they do the job.



I also have spare  fuses in stock for the meters I own :

[Cubdriver]

Like most of us, I have a number, but here is a video about the latest addition to the line, a Fluke 8100B Nixie Tube meter. I just got this going with the help of Tautech and Paul Moir (see  repair thread here : https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/nixie-tube-fluke-8100b-dmm/ )

Wonderful!!  I'm thrilled to see you got it back up and running.  VERY cool piece of hardware!

-Pat

[crispy_tofu]

My favourite: Fluke 87V of course !

Wow it's an EX version! The red looks fantastic. 

But for precise work I have switched to using a monkey:

Fantastic! I'm sure it's in spec, but has it been calibrated? 

[FlyingHacker]

Like most of us, I have a number, but here is a video about the latest addition to the line, a Fluke 8100B Nixie Tube meter. I just got this going with the help of Tautech and Paul Moir (see  repair thread here : https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/nixie-tube-fluke-8100b-dmm/ )



https://youtu.be/bOKkrFakrys

Wonderful!!  I'm thrilled to see you got it back up and running.  VERY cool piece of hardware!

-Pat

Thanks. You have some nice Nixie stuff as well I see from your earlier posts!  Love these old boat anchor pieces of test equipment!

[AF6LJ]

Nice collections of meters here.
Good to see the old being revived and pressed into service.

[med6753]

My trio. Fluke 8021B, Fluke 87, and Heathkit V-5 VTVM (Yes, it works well even though it looks battered and bruised)

Guess which one is my "go to" multimeter?

The VTVM!

-Pat

Of course it is! 

It was built by my Father in 1951. He owned a TV repair shop in Howard Beach, Queens, NYC from about that time until 1955 when he joined IBM. When I was a teenager in the mid 1960's I got it out of storage plus his Heathkit O-10 Oscilloscope and at least 150 vacuum tubes. That started me on the path. To this day I still love the warm glow of vacuum tubes.

About 20 years ago I did a complete rebuild. Replaced all caps except one mica cap which tested good and replaced several carbon composition resistors that were out of spec. The 1% precision resistors in the input network were OK. I also replaced the selenium rectifier in the B+ with a silicon diode. That resulted in a slightly higher B+ voltage because the diode has less forward drop than the selenium rectifier. But it did not cause any adverse effects and the VTVM calibrated just fine.

This VTVM also has an unusual tube layout. It uses a 12AU7 twin triode and a rare “loktal” or “locktal” 7A6 twin diode. I'm surprized Heath used this 7A6 because by 1951 that tube was pretty much obsolete. If you're into antique radios you'll know that Philco was a big user of these locktal tubes in the 1940's. Perhaps Heath got a good deal on some surplus. Later models of Heath VTVM's replaced the 7A6 with a modern 6AL5 and that tube combo of 12AU7/6AL5 continued right up until Heath stopped selling VTVM kits around 1990.

I really don't use it all that much but I bring it up every once in a while and let it sit powered on for several hours and then check it's calibration. It's always within it's stated accuracy of 3% full scale on DCV. And it definitely is a blast from the past.   

[AF6LJ]

Nicely built VTVM.
Those loctal tubes are notoriously long lived.

[Cubdriver]

I'm with you on the warm glow of tubes.  VLSI and surface mount technology is truly amazing when it comes to stuffing incredible capabilities into minimal space, and we'd be lost today without it, but there's just something about a well laid out chassis with a bunch of differently shaped glowing glass bottles on it.  Perhaps that you can see the active elements, and can look inside and see different structures in different types.  As wonderful as silicon is, they're still impersonal little black bugs with different numbers stamped on them.

If my recollection of what I read is correct, Philco's use of Loktals was driven in large part by their intense rivalry with RCA in the development of television and the fact that Loktals were developed by RCA's competitor Sylvania.

-Pat

[SeanB]

Not multimeter, but I have a pair of Telefunken V72 amplifiers, which came as part of a package. Nice enough if you like 34dB of gain, but otherwise not much use. they were working till I took them out of service a few years ago, must see if they still work, even with the rather hazardous single connector with mains on the one end on bare pins of the socket.

Don't know what to do with them, might have to find somebody who wants them.

As to tubes, at the Ham meet last weekend, I saw some slightly used Nuvistors, just what all the Tek fans are looking for.

[AF6LJ]

I'm with you on the warm glow of tubes.  VLSI and surface mount technology is truly amazing when it comes to stuffing incredible capabilities into minimal space, and we'd be lost today without it, but there's just something about a well laid out chassis with a bunch of differently shaped glowing glass bottles on it.  Perhaps that you can see the active elements, and can look inside and see different structures in different types.  As wonderful as silicon is, they're still impersonal little black bugs with different numbers stamped on them.

If my recollection of what I read is correct, Philco's use of Loktals was driven in large part by their intense rivalry with RCA in the development of television and the fact that Loktals were developed by RCA's competitor Sylvania.

-Pat

RCA was the Microsoft of my grandparents generation.
They owned so much of the new technology of radio it made it difficult for newcomers in the field.
Then along came Joe and Paul Galvin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola

[Cubdriver]

And my understanding is that David Sarnoff was a pretty ruthless businessman, which I suppose to some extent comes with the territory, but doesn't mean I have to like it.

-Pat

[felixd]

I've bought this DMM from same promotion in Poland (but I sold DSO - Rigol 1052E). Brand new Sanwa PC5000a cost me around 20$ USD 

I do have also two cheap 3$ meters

Recently I also bought:
* HV Philips probe - PM9246
* Lutron CA-203 clamp meter

Hello.

I bought a cheap DSO few months ago and got a Sanwa PC5000a DMM for almost free in some special offer. I would really recommend this DMM. Solid, fast and precise. Extreme difference after switching from some cheap Chinese crap ;-).

[LeWidget]

oooh can I play...

Here's my unit. First multimeter, purchased from Jaycar for about $50, it's the Digitech QM1548



Also found this in the shed... doesn't work, needs fused and a serious clean/re-solder of wires etc.. old DSE Q1022

[crispy_tofu]

oooh can I play...

Here's my unit. First multimeter, purchased from Jaycar for about $50, it's the Digitech QM1548

Thanks for sharing! That Digitech QM1548 looks kinda like a Mastech, with its 45 degree design on the bottom. 

[pmcouto]

Some of my bench multimeters measuring a LiPo battery.
Technically, the Keithley 2450 isn’t a multimeter…

[Bud]

Beckman Industrial model 310









Interesting LCD holder



Spare fuse



Note the installed fuse removal ribbon



10A range current shunt. Note they put solder across the shunt, was that how they trimmed it for required voltage drop ?

[Vgkid]

@pmcouto
Cool a K7510
@Bud
I bet it has alot of BI components in it.

[Bud]

Not sure how old it is but still goes strong as a backup meter and chances are will live longer than me.
 

[Tim F]

seems to be a date code on that red component network - '8642'. Perhaps 1986?

[MLXXXp]

Beckman Industrial model 310

Nice photos Bud!

Did you know that the tilting bale is designed to be removed? You can insert it into the second set of holes for a lower tilt angle. You can also reverse it and insert it into the second set of holes, to use it as a carrying handle or for hanging.

My first DMM was a Beckman Industrial model Tech 300. The difference between it and the 310 is that the 300 doesn't have the "Insta-Ohms" quick continuity indicator, or the 10A current range, and the 300's DC volts accuracy is 0.5% instead of 0.25%. They share the same main board.

The user manual for mine covers the 300, 310 and also the 330 (which adds true RMS AC and 0.1% DCV accuracy). It includes full schematics. One difference between the 300 and 310 in the schematics is that jumper wire W1 is soldered in on the 300 but W2 is on the 310. It turns out that removing W1 and installing W2 is all that's required to enable the "Insta-Ohms" feature. 

The plastic "Interesting LCD holder" broke on my 300 so it no longer was able to apply the proper pressure to the zebra strip on the LCD. Fortunately, soon after it broke, a 310 they had where I worked died and I was able to take the LCD holder from it to replace mine. 

I bought the 300 from a friend who sold it to me cheap because the 220 ohm resistor in the precision resistor chip U1 had been damaged, resulting in the low resistance range and some others being off (by somewhere around 10%, I think). I lived with this until about 2 years ago, when I decided to replace the resistor chip with the identical one from the broken 310. However, after examining both meters and the schematics, I realised that could instead replace the 310's main board with the one from my 300 because the resistor chip is on the daughter board.

So now I have a working Tech 310 S/N 60625058 but with the main board from 300 S/N 01028044 (so possibly a little less accurate than an actual 310). 
I've checked it and it appears to still read within the original accuracy specifications on all ranges.

This has been my main DMM for over 35 years, only recently being supplanted by a BK Precision 2709B.

P.S. The case of my 300 was an older design. It had a metal wire tilting bale. There was no separate battery cover; you had to remove the entire back to replace the battery or fuse. The plastic shield around the test lead plugs was a larger diameter than is now standard, so the leads won't fit into newer meters and standard shielded plugs won't fit into it.