Hello! I'm Chris, a first time poster and a recent member of the community. However, I'm a pretty frequent member of the Madbean forum, dedicated to the DYI guitar pedal building and other musical creations. When I started on this journey of pedal building a couple of years ago, I made sure to grab the essential components. One of which is a Multimeter. I looked on Amazon, and found Mastech one. This one seemed to be a good price and had tons of functions:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JQ4O2U/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_1_wA couple of years later, and my multimeter is starting to go a bit haywire. I'll often turn the big dial to a particular function, and the functionality goes in and out. For example, if I turn it to test resistance, sometimes it jumps to hFE, sometimes to capacitance. When measuring values, sometimes it take a long time to settle down; resistors when measured can take up to a minute to zero in on the value. So I'm starting to look at getting another one (potentially having this as a backup or a 2nd) and wanted to see what the community's experience was.
I know these are the functions I 100% use:
* Resistance (from 10E to 10M)
* Continuity
* Fwd Voltage on Diodes
* Capacitance (from 1pF to 500mF)
* DC Voltage (nothing above 30V)
* hFE for Transistors (I have a board I built to test this so it's not mandatory)
* DC Amperage (nothing above 1000mA)
I posted something similar on my pedal forum, and got some responses. Then I found this forum and realized there was a whole slew of options that were out there. I have spent some time reading through posts, trying to understand what various Multimeters do in various price ranges. For my application for pedal building, I don't need AC measurements. While I will at some point move into building some AC devices (tube amps are somewhere in my future), the most important thing to me now is accurate measurement of components in terms of resistance and capacitance in the ranges I mentioned above. My previous pedal had issues measuring capacitance at the higher ranges (the biggest caps I put in pedals are in the 220-470mF range). Pedals often require biasing, especially around transistors, so accurate measurement of DC Voltage is very important. I measure DC amperage to determine how many pedals I can run off a single power supply. While something that measures hFE would be nice, it's not crucial as I'm considering buying the PeAK tester, which is capable of measuring both silicon and germanium components.
Based on the things I'm looking for, I was hoping to pick up a Multimeter in the $60ish range that focuses on accurate component values across the range I mentioned.. However, if my price is way off, let me know. I'm a hobbyist, so while I would like a quality meter that will last for the foreseeable future, I have some other upgrades I'd like to make (like a new soldering iron). I'm trying to determine what my best buy would be.
For an FYI, here's some of the suggestions from my pedal group:
* Extech EX330
* Tekpower TP40
* Vichy VC97
* Extech MN47
Since finding this forum, I've also discovered the Uni-T UT61's, which appear to meet my qualifications.
Thanks again for taking a look! It's awesome to find a portion of a community so devoted to something like this.