Wow guess I am not the only one who needs a new multimeter lol. My old one was a cheap 20$ digital that I somehow fried while testing high frequency AC. Now I'm stuck using an old analog meter until I get a new one. Fluke sells some quality multimeters. You can check radioshack but they are likely overpriced just like with everything else they sell there . Plan on around 50$ for a good meter. You can get them for lower price but will lack the goodies. If you're working on any tube electronics you will want a meter that goes as high as 1kv DC. A few cool things some of the higher end meters have is capacitance and frequency measurement. I think some of them now even measure inductance. Many will have built in transistor/diode testers. Another thing you may want is an amperage function but many of them have that anyway. Good luck.
haha im no money tree! fluke meters are :$ otherwise ild buy all fluke meters. i bought a fluke voltalert for about $30 with a sears gift card. i know it's a rip but i really wanted it and use it all the time. for general testing i use an ideal vol-con elite voltage and continuity tester, but i was looking to get a more specific meter for marine wiring and alternate electrical engineering.
when you say fried, did you blow up your leads? slapping a ground (or bare neutral) and a feed together in ac electric is a sparking matter :} anyways, leads are replaceable, but if that's not it, and you didnt throw your tester out yet, try opening it up!
Oh believe me I opened that thing. The voltage I gave it being slightly high frequency AC (around 500hz) gapped right through the high megaohm input resistor past the diode and even past the fuse which didn't blow, and right into the little blop plastic chip connected to the LCD. May have well struck the thing with lightning the way it looked. I was trying to build a 12v to 600v DC to DC converter to run a tube amp off of a car battery. I got a good lesson in high frequency AC and how it arcs all too easy.
I didn't think flukes cost that much. They do sell top end stuff but I figured they would have a few cheap ones. Well Walmart used to sell a black digital multimeter in their electrical department. That was the one I had for a long time. It was around 20$ and was alright until I fried mine. Yeah mine broke but it was my fault.
Check any hardware stores, they will likely have 20-30$ multimeters that will do all you need. Go with digital. Analog meters are a pain in the butt to get a decent reading off of.
Here's a really cheap multimeter that worked really well for me until I sold it to a friend.. A few local places used to sell that for around 20$. IIRC it cost me like 10$ around Christmas time on sale at Walmart a weee long time ago. I think like over a million of those DT-830 meters were sold making it one of the most popular ones for super cheap and they worked really good. The DM-301 (DM-75 is almost identical) is the one I fried below. Good meter much like the one above and some Walmarts may still carry it.. Last time I checked they had one left for 10$ on "roll back" but by the time I got the extra cash it was sold
Here's a really cheap multimeter that worked really well for me until I sold it to a friend.. A few local places used to sell that for around 20$. IIRC it cost me like 10$ around Christmas time on sale at Walmart a weee long time ago.
These are now in surplus stores for $5 and not too bad if you don't expect to measure millivolts with.
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