10MΩ should get you in the ball-park though? Maybe with some MOVs or GDTs in parallel...
My understanding is these piezo ignitors don't pack much of a punch, energy wise, but can deliver maybe 10kV or so, happy to be corrected if wrong.
Right. So a few points. When I show the UT61E, I show that while the MOVs would be fairly fast and have a fair amount of capacitance, their inductance was too high to make any difference at the frequencies we are considering. I think I talked about shunting it right at the source (small cap right at the inputs) but that IMO, would be a very bad choice. I have seen handhelds with intentional spark gaps designed into the artwork, right at the front end. Bat shit crazy stuff. In the end, I talked about like any problem, there may be many ways to solve it. Still, each meter is going to be unique.
But now I think we get to the crooks of what you are driving at. You suspect the grill start is putting out 1MegaVolt which unfairly wipes out all of those UNI-T meters.
I don't think I ever did a video on it but not all grill starters are alike. Even if I have two what appear on the outside to be identical grill starters, the waveforms they produce can be drastically different. They can also change a lot as the cheap springs they use take a set. If we use 1000V per mm, 10mm air gap for 10kV, I have no doubt that I have one grill starter that will exceed that.
I wonder too, if I could find a much stiffer spring and maybe shim it, how far I could push one. I wouldn't be surprised to see one jump 20mm or more depending where you live.
So, yes, I have a standard reference grill starter that I calibrate with my home made target. It has indeed damaged many UNI-T meters along with a few others.
I imagine I could tone it down further if the goal is to get more meters to survive it but we wouldn't be able to compare results....