ESR Meters, which one do you own?

[censei]

I'm curious in knowing what kind of ESR Meter you guys use and why you purchased it.

[Ken Layton]

I have the CapAnalyzer88A (available from MCM Electronics). I've had it about ten years now. Best investment I ever made. I use it every day! Since I primarily service power supplies, monitors, and amplifiers (where ESR is important) this meter has been perfect for me. It's designed for use on PC boards and radial leaded electrolytic capacitors. Comes with a 'tweezer' style probe/test leads so you can test caps on a pc board with one hand. It also discharges charged electrolytics before testing.

At the time, I had also purchased the Howard Electronics "Capacitor Wizard" to see if I liked one over the other. Hands down the CapAnalyzer88A beat out the Capacitor Wizard. I didn't like the Capacitor Wizard's 'clunky' feel nor did I like the two seperate probe test leads. I ended up giving it away to another tech after just a couple of month's use.

The only bad thing about the CapAnalyzer88A (it's been replaced by the "B" model now) is the short battery life and to change batteries you have to unscrew the case. It uses 4 AAA batteries and it does NOT have a power jack. I typically get only a week out of a set of batteries, but I use it alot. YMMV.

[MonMotha]

I've actually been in the market for one of these.  Does the probe style on that particular model allow testing of SMD devices like ceramic chips and the surface mount tantalum packages as well as leaded types?  I mostly do small stuff, so I'm pretty much exclusively in the surface mount realm at this point.

[Ken Layton]

An ESR meter is only for testing electrolytic capacitors and certain ranges of Tantalum electrolytics. Yes the tweezer style probes will work with surface mount electrolytics.

[MonMotha]

Heh, yeah, no real use on ceramics. Though, amazingly, some ceramic cap datasheets actually spec ESR, but I'm not sure how you'd go about measuring it effectively.  Was just giving package examples.

I'll see about picking one of those up, though.