40 notes these days will buy you a lovely s/h AVO model 8 and it'll last a lifetime. I bought a model 7 the other day for 15 quid and it's built like a tank and will measure up to 1200V with zero risk of exploding in your face - unlike those ridiculous cheap AND nasty DVMs where you're taking your life in your hands with just normal mains voltages. Real quality never dates.
I bought a very similar DMM from Aldi a few years ago (possibly a decade, now I think on) for a tenner (maybe a little less). It has the same 23 way rotary selector switch using push toggle buttons in place of the on/off and the hold(?) buttons (in the same layout). It has four test lead sockets, a common with one for the V/ohms, another for the (fused) 2 to 200mA scales) and an unfused one for the 20A scale (same selector setting as the 20mA).
There's a 9 and 1.5 volt 'battery test' in place of the Hz option but apart from that, this Craft labelled MD10759 would appear to have been made in the same factory (it also sports a transistor test socket).
I bought it to supplement an old Fluke DMM I'd inherited from work (not one their higher spec models but it might become a collector's item in another decade or so :-).
The Aldi meter has been perfectly fine all these years but it's never had a very hard life (parked on my workbench, stuck on the 20v scale most of the time - testing laptop charging bricks- with the odd excursion to the 200v and the ohms ranges for buzzing out cct traces or wiring).
You might find a similar DMM in AdiLidl for around a tenner today (such DMMs are frequently on sale in these shops). Whether the build quality is as good as that 10(?) year old example in my possession, I wouldn't like to say but it would certainly be worth having a look next time you're handy to one of their stores.
They are way too heavy* for portable use and always occupied far too much bench space. They are the kind of thing the soviets would have made, good in their day, maybe 50 years ago but not IMHO now. No need to buy nasty exploding DMM's either especially at the 40 quid price point.
Apart from being British and that they might survive a nuclear apocalypse I can't see *any* other redeeming features.
I have one here. Can't remember when it was last used. Having to search for expensive batteries - rather than getting one in the local shop - would make it a PITA for most. Apart from the bulk.
But for a lot of modern uses an AVO isn't that good. It's relatively big, b ulky and heavy too.
not everyone wants to measure 1200V. I have about a dozen AVOs on a shelf t hey haven;t been used for years. We use DMMs now they are far better for al most every use an AVO was put to.
En el artículo , The Other Mike escribió:
Sometimes an analogue meter can be useful - you can see decaying/varying voltage or capacitance of a circuit in a way a digital meter doesn't show you.
But yes, an AVO 8, while superb in its day, is a bit of a dinosaur nowadays.
Quite often that extra little bit of loading an analogue meter puts across a measurement makes for a more meaningful reading. DMMs are so high impedance and whilst most of the time that's a good thing, there are other times when it can be very unhelpful and provide a false positive. And like someone else said, for peaking & tweaking, they're *way* better than a DMM.
In those cases I'd hope the user would have the inteligence to use a load r esistor.
How ? If I want to know the peak voltage I leave the meter connected go off have a cup of tea and when I come back the peak, average, maxium can be called u p, (depending on meter) without me having to sit there for seconds, minutes, h ours or days staring at a needle with a mirror behind it.
Slight misunderstanding here. I'm talking of the kind of tweaking and peaking us radio hams have to do when tuning intermediate frequency stages of amplifiers. The effect is much more easily seen with an analogue meter.
'Tho best seen on the DC coupled input on a scope;)..
You can "amplify" the trace and then move it with the shift controls to magnify it as it were...
yes I can understand how flicking needles can make things easiier for some. But the majoroty I think are better off with a DMM, some of those have anolgue displays if you really need it. Are they many radios hams left, our rad-soc in the uni disapeared 20 years ago.
If you're dealing with a receiver so old as to have IF coils that need tweeking, a low impedance AVO is probably the correct tool for the job as voltage measurements will be given with that too.
With high impedance circuits a low impedance AVO can make a big difference to the reading. Which is why a modern DVM is so much better. ;-)
We have a Tinkering Society here (and a maker space).
I think we got 14 people through their Foundation licence last year, and another 12 this year (plus some Intermediates and an Advanced).
But how many licence holders brew anything like their own nowadays?.
Christ am I just getting olde;!)?...
Test leads are trivial to replace. I've got a good variety of meters, inclu ding a batch of £2 jobs for a job when I wanted to measure lots of things at once, and quite honestly I've not had problems with any of them... othe r than: leads breaking leads coming out far enough to not make contact These days almost any multimeter is good enough for diy. Just dont use some of them north of the CU's fuses, for that you need a suitable category rat ing.
NT
Having had a quite expensive DVM blow up on mains, I'll not use one for that any more. Have a proper mains test stick one for that - more convenient too.
BTW, no more volts 'north of the CU' in the average UK house anyway. ;-)
Its the i squared t that's the problem
NT
I've got 12 or 13 oscilloscopes here at present (most of 'em work!) but I'd still rather use an analogue meter. Yeah, I guess I'm old fashioned inasmuch as I find it hard to get enthused about modern gear. I'm lucky in preferring vintage as at least the components are manageably large, unlike today's SMDs which I personally can't deal with.
The advent of the computer has tempted away a vast proportion of youngsters who would otherwise have got stuck into radio. I suspect the resulting shortage is why good RF engineers are remunerated to such stratospheric levels.
You using jump leads instead of test leads?
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