ESR Meter

[lowell]

Can someone please suggest a decent ESR meter? Ideally under $50? I've searched online but there are a ton of em... and would rather take someone's experience and advice.

Thanks!

[bob p]

I have a B&K which I really like, but it's rather expensive at $300.
I've also heard good things about the Extech products, which are a bit cheaper but stil seem to be out of your range.
I'm not familiar with a good sub-$50 ESR meter.
Anyone?

[R.G.]

I built one from a kit a ways back. It was well under $50, worked fine. It's been some years, though, and I suspect the presence of the $5 ebay open frames killed it off.

Your problem will be that they're low voltage devices, and you probably want to measure high voltage caps; you'd love it if you could measure in circuit. That's going to be a problem.

The simplest thing is a signal generator with a low output impedance, and a scope.

[The Dude]

My favorite was the old Creative Electronics one. Bullet proof and reliable, but I don't believe they are made any more.



A little Googling got me here:

Anatek Blue ESR Meter ? Anatek Instruments
It's supposed to be the successor of the original Creative Electronics one, but I have no experience with it. I don't know how well it works or how reliable it is. I see it does have a digital display instead of the old analog one. It might be worth a try, but it's not 50 buck.

If you could find one of the old original ones used for decent money, I would nab it.

[lowell]

Thanks! I actually stumbled on that one too...and ordered it along with the Blue Ring Meter... more $ than I hoped but I'm also hoping these tools will increase my repairs so they'll pay for themselves I guess.

[The Dude]

You will like having a good ESR meter. Not a fix all, but being able to check ESR on caps in circuit will save you lots of time.

[lowell]

Done fine without one for 11 yrs workin on guitar amps. But got an itch to figure this whole SMPS thing out.

[bob p]

I never really had need for one until I started designing an SMPS. I ended up buying my LCR meter and a Fluke 4-wire 5-digit bench meter just for that project.

[GainFreak]

...I suspect the presence of the $5 ebay open frames killed it off.

You're right. I also wanted to build one from a long time and then I noticed the prices on Ebay and it killed it but maybe one day I'll build it. At least it will look vintage with that VU meter.
More specifically this one looks simple and easy to build also because I have similar transformer left from an SMPS. Maybe if you put higher voltage 10uf capacitors it could be used for high voltage caps as well?

[olddawg]

I've had several over the years. Back in the camcorder days I used one a lot, until I realized you were better off shot gunning massive amounts of surface mount caps because the would all be going bad soon. Nowadays I test caps by replacement. Once upon a time my shop had a big complex Sencore cap checker that would test caps at rated voltage. I had to keep it on my bench because the other techs were blowing caps up constantly. Caps have gotten smaller and cheaper. If you have to take it out to test, you might as well replace it. (Same amount of time) and in circuit measurements are rarely reliable.

[lowell]

The Blue ESR meter is supposed to take accurate in-circuit readings. I hope that's true.

[The Dude]

IMO, any ESR meter is not an "end all" cap tester. Just because a cap tests low ESR in circuit doesn't mean it's positively good. It could still be arcing or bad in some other way. Again, IMO, where the ESR meter is valuable is showing you caps that are definitely bad. In a way, it's much like a tube tester in that respect. If the ESR meter says it's bad, it's bad. If the ESR meter says it's good, it might still be bad. The difference over a tube tester is that it's easy to unplug a tube and substitute another. It's less easy having to unsolder a bunch of caps to find the offending one. An ESR meter will tell you which caps to unsolder first and usually, that's the end of it. As to the accuracy of the Blue ESR meter, I don't find it necessary to be accurate within a gnat's ass. Most of the time, you are looking for grossly out of whack measurements and it will certainly show you that.

[octal]

My favorite was the old Creative Electronics one. Bullet proof and reliable, but I don't believe they are made any more.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40014[/ATTACH]

A little Googling got me here:

Anatek Blue ESR Meter ? Anatek Instruments
It's supposed to be the successor of the original Creative Electronics one, but I have no experience with it. I don't know how well it works or how reliable it is. I see it does have a digital display instead of the old analog one. It might be worth a try, but it's not 50 buck.

If you could find one of the old original ones used for decent money, I would nab it.

I have two of the Creative Electronics ones (not for sale, just want to add my +1 for liking that product.) Although the use of "C" cell batteries is pretty annoying and the suggested ESR values per uF of capacitance on the meter scale are IMO very high. Some caps are good enough to "pass" but bad enough to cause symptoms. A new cap of the same value will measure much lower ESR.

[Enzo]

I have never felt the need to use one. We used to have one of those big fancy Sencore Z-meters for caps. I found it useful for two things. One was inductors. I could buy crossover inductors from Parts Express or somewhere, but they came in even increments 3mHy, 4mHy, 5... So if my crossover needed a 3.6mHy, I could just buy a 4mHy and unwind it until it measures 3.6, et voila. And the other thing was leakage at voltage.

I never worried about ESR, but leakage is what kills a cap for use. Those ESR meters will not remotely put operating voltages on a cap. It might be great at a volt or two, but my caps have to withstand 400-500 volts. Give me a leakage tester any day. My old Eico 950B still can do that job.

[The Dude]

I have to confess; I got so used to using the thing that I didn't even pay attention to the numbers on the meter. I just looked where the needle was. After a while, you just know what you should expect.