A Decent LCR/Inductance Meter?

TeleCrunch

New member
Anyone have suggestions on a reasonably priced accurate LCR/Inductance meter? I currently have a piece of junk from Ebay I want to replace as a birthday present to myself. I primarily want to use it to accurately measure guitar pickups and wah inductors. Thanks!
 
I use one like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/GM328-Tran...epid=0&hash=item4d95517ef6:g:5QUAAOSwFd9dL9ru
I paid $18 for mine last year. The seller from whom I bought mine no longer carries them, but plenty of other sellers do.
It measures wah-wah chokes no problem. It cannot measure pickup inductance because there is too much resistance & capacitance. Also very good for testing transistors (Si, Ge, JFET, MOSFET), diodes and capacitors.
 
I use one like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/GM328-Tran...epid=0&hash=item4d95517ef6:g:5QUAAOSwFd9dL9ru
I paid $18 for mine last year. The seller from whom I bought mine no longer carries them, but plenty of other sellers do.
It measures wah-wah chokes no problem. It cannot measure pickup inductance because there is too much resistance & capacitance. Also very good for testing transistors (Si, Ge, JFET, MOSFET), diodes and capacitors.
That's a pretty handy device. I wonder if it can be calibrated for a pickup's inductance if you measure and match the capacitance and resistance of the pickup for calibration?
 
Doesn't work that way. I suspect that this little tester applies a voltage pulse and measures di/dt. Too much R or C and that measurement goes haywire.
You need a network analyzer to properly measure a pickup. I use the ghetto method of using a scope & sig gen to measure impedance over a range of discrete frequencies. Once I've found the resonant peak, I add 470pF in parallel and find the peak again. From all that I can calc L, R & C. It's a bit tedious.
 
I use one like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/GM328-Tran...epid=0&hash=item4d95517ef6:g:5QUAAOSwFd9dL9ru
I paid $18 for mine last year. The seller from whom I bought mine no longer carries them, but plenty of other sellers do.
It measures wah-wah chokes no problem. It cannot measure pickup inductance because there is too much resistance & capacitance. Also very good for testing transistors (Si, Ge, JFET, MOSFET), diodes and capacitors.

I use a gm328 for all my transistor and diode testing too, it's really good ! It also mesure chokes inductance oO??? I am gonna give it a try ... I wanna get some 42tm003 for the conquer supreme but mouser is out of stock :( gonna mesure the few audio transformers I got on hand... Maybe I will be lucky :D
 
You need a network analyzer to properly measure a pickup

yep - haven't done it with pickups but have with other things using my Analog Discovery Digilent USB. Has a network analyzer and special app Impedance Analyizer. Works awesome.


If anyone is interested you can download he Waveforms software and run in DEMO mode. Awesome tool.

impedance-analyzer-screen-shot.png
 
I use mine to check my pickups after I wind them. When I tested them against a known value of my DiMarzio and my Seymour Duncan it was correct. When I first got into winding pickups I was told from other members of a pickup winding forum that I needed a LCR.

I have this person PCB and haven't populated it yet.

 
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Thanks all for the suggestions! I ended up getting the Peak LCR45, and so far I've been really happy with it. I have two Bill Lawrence HB-R and HB-L circuit board backed humbuckers that I measured first, and the LCR data was perfect and accurate for simulating my 335 wiring in LTSpice.
 
Thanks all for the suggestions! I ended up getting the Peak LCR45, and so far I've been really happy with it. I have two Bill Lawrence HB-R and HB-L circuit board backed humbuckers that I measured first, and the LCR data was perfect and accurate for simulating my 335 wiring in LTSpice.

How do you like the pickups? I have some of his Keystones in a Tele and a Strat
 
These look interesting for about $100US

View attachment 5382

I just got one of these today (DE-5000), I'm pretty happy with it so far. The SMD tweezer probe is extremely convenient.

In "Auto" mode it detects the component type and displays the value in the correct unit, no button pressing required.

I even spot checked about 10 capacitors in-circuit and it accurately measured all but one (47pF with a resistor directly across it)... although I don't recommend actually trusting any in-circuit capacitance measurements.
 
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