Multimeter recommendations

[jrfrond]

The Huntron Tracker is just a fancy commrcial version of a little box techs have been making for decades. A little low voltage transformer - 6v is common - and a couple resistors. Set your scope to XY and connect the box. Now you can test parts on your boards. I never used one more than a couple minutes, but some guys really like them

I only know one shop, which is a good, reputable on here on Long Island, who bought one and loves it. The old transformer trick thing? I have it. Built it a long time ago. It was in a book that I have called "How To Test Almost Anything Electronic" by Delton Horn. Cool little book! Anyway, it's just a simple curve tracer and I don't even use it anymore, but it IS a good little trick. I don't need a fancy digital gizmo like the Huntron, but that's just me. The older I get, the less paraphernalia I seem to need. Of all of the test equipment I have on my bench (and there's a lot of it), my multimeter gets by far the most use, followed by my scope and signal generator. After that, it's here-and-there.

[Enzo]

The point is that the little box could be made from junk box items or a few dollars at most, and you hooked it to your scope. Every shop has a scope.

Then the Huntron folks came along and built a scope just for this purpose but unable to do all the rest of the things a scope does. Added a few bells and whistles like switchable test frequency, and they want a thousand bucks.

One thing in the little box's favor, I think, in the day that was a popular project, the diode test function was not a regular feature on most voltmeters. The box gives a pretty obvious diode trace. when testing semis.