Is this a good meter?

[Joe Gwinn]

I have shown why measurements made with the Extech are in error when both series and parallel loss are present. You have not demonstrated that there is anything wrong with what I have shown, nor have you presented any evidence that the Extech is correct. Neither now nor before.

"Shown" is a very big word. I don't recall that agreement was achieved.

If you want to recommend it, you should show that the errors are small enough not to matter. Long ago I suggested this. I am certainly not going to to do it for you. You are the one who says its use is OK.

My main suggestion to you was that you perform a series of simple experiments. No results were ever reported. Except one, the one that showed the unexpected curvature. I gave many precise cites and and suggested many gedanken experiments back in 2009.

Anyway, I am not going to re-fight the battles of late 2009.

[David Schwab]

If you want to recommend it, you should show that the errors are small enough not to matter. Long ago I suggested this. I am certainly not going to to do it for you. You are the one who says its use is OK.

Mike, a lot of pickup makers use these things. I think the point is that even if the reading is in error it doesn't matter that much because of the way they are used. You don't need one of these to make pickups. What they are useful for is comparing pickups. So even if the readings are incorrect, they will be off on both (probably) so for comparative results it's OK. That's the same reason it doesn't matter if you are making the reading at one frequency since you are sampling that results on both pickups.

I don't think anyone here assumes that these meters give you a very precise and thorough plot of the pickup's inductance. They are probably handy to check for shorts, and to give an idea of what's going on with a design... like using a gauss meter. You don't need one of those to make pickups, but it's handy when comparing pickups or magnets.

So you have to ask what the original poster's intent was when asking about the meter.

[Mike Sulzer]

Mike, a lot of pickup makers use these things. I think the point is that even if the reading is in error it doesn't matter ...

I pretty much agree with this which is why I wrote on July 6 "None of this matters if you are just using the meter to look for possible problems in a batch of pickups. But if you need accurate inductances?"

The issue here is the errors in inductance as measured by the Extech when series and parallel losses are present.

The discussions and research that Joe refers to are related to a different question: do inductances decrease with frequency?

If the Extech measures a lower inductance at its higher frequency, this could be because:

1. The measurement is in error.

2. The inductance really is lower.

You cannot eliminate reason 1. by showing that some inductors do indeed lose inductance at higher frequencies.