If we are playing top trumps here, thats not enough to beat my hand
Hey, shouldn't we all have oversized ego's and act like a jackass as our leaders do?
I was just curious after thinking about that visit where I discovered that my friend only had one multimeter and we got dead ended right out of the gate troubleshooting that tuner because of it. When you think about it, no multimeter is perfectly understandable since there are plenty of people out there who don't do any electronic or electrical work, but one multimeter is pretty extreme, extremely underequipped in my opinion, for someone who used to build his own audio equipment since you can't observe any more than one measurement at a time or you end up completely stuck in situations where it's already in use on something else like we were with this car battery that was sitting there charging.
For regular day to day use:
My bench setup here at home is an HP 3457 sitting on top of a pair of HP 3478As for low voltage work. This has been a convenient setup because I can keep one set aside to loop a current measurement through if necessary and be able to monitor two voltages at the same time or change one over to take resistance measurements. To the right of those, I've got an Agilent 34401A and a Fluke 8000 since they're good up to 1,000 VDC which provides the voltage headroom I need for most vacuum tube work at B+ voltages above what the others can handle, which also keeps the others free for lower voltage measurements as well as current and resistance uses when I'm using the 34401A for checking B+ rails.
The Fluke 8000's there and I have used it but it isn't frequent that I do. I have another one that I need to get the vintage NiCad rechargeable batteries out of that I took apart suspecting batteries inside because of the weight. Sure enough, there they were, but what I wasn't expecting to see was how the meter was built. This was a surprise and a disappointment and not what I was expecting based on Fluke's reputation and the 8000 really only gets used if I need another high voltage measurement and the Agilent's already in use.
I've also been finding that my Simpson 635 and 260-8xpi have been staying on the bench more than they've been off it even though they're not set in permanent locations. For some things watching a needle move up and down a scale is easier than going by numerical readout.
Portable multimeters for mainly on the road use: Agilent U1242A, U1272A. I'm kind of torn between adding the Agilent U1461A insulation tester and U1602B portable scope and a U1213 clamp meter since they can be used as multimeters but it isn't their primary function.
My U1252B bought it. Which sets me in the most peculiar of situations: I have no second handheld DMM. How the hell did I end up in this situation?? I clearly have not been buying enough TEA...
What happened to the U1252B if I may ask? I was thinking about buying one in a couple of weeks after asking for recommendations on them a few months ago so I'm wondering if there's any gotchas I need to think about before pulling the trigger. The plan is to add a third quality handheld meter that has BT capability and bump the U1242A which doesn't (I'm not sure if it can be added if I order the U1242B bluetooth dongle mount - might have to jury rig a bluetooth dongle on the back and see if it communicates or if the openings in the case for the IR were for future revisions) and kick that to stand alone use without external logging, which then kicks a crappy Canadian Tire multimeter to permanently living in the car for convenience for working on the car since I don't care if temperature extremes or theft or whatever happening to one of those pieces of junk.