What to look for in a multimeter

[specialx]

I am goign to need a good multimeter soon and would like to know what to look for. My application for it would be building, and later designing amplifiers.

So what things should I be looking for? How much DC and AC voltage and amperage should a multimeter be able to handle for this application?
What resistances should it be able to handle up to? And how accurate? Obviously the higher is better but how much tolerance is moderately acceptable?

What about capacitance checks? Worthwhile having? I noticed most of them only go up to uF range anyway.
Diode & Transistor checks? Any of them useful and/or used often by anyone?

I found one also that has temperature check. That seems good for measuring the heat of a heatsink roughly.

Relative zero function? Would that be worthwhile aswell?

Any help would be good. I will also post this to the Wiki, or if someone else wants to, could you direct me there.

Thanks
-Mike

 

[Peter Daniel]

Check this: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3940&highlight=multimeter

 

[specialx]

I've had a read over that, sorry I didn't mention it, but they jsut recommend multimeters, I am more interested to know what people look for in a multimeter, so I can make a better judgement for a cheaper one, as a Fluke product is out of my budget, wel lthe one's i found in online stores accessible to me.

I tried some online stuff by searching google but nothign had anythign concrete on what to look for.

-Mike

 

[Peter Daniel]

Sorry for wrong link Check this one then: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6188&highlight=fluke

 

[specialx]

Thanks, although I am still unsure of what exactly to look for, as in values for each of the features etc.
Everyone seems to be in grand support of Fluke.

That will do me... anyway I am off to go buy one

-Mike

 

[specialx]

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/3d9d170f09afafda2741c0a87f9c0725/Product/View/Q1447

At ~$45 USD you can't go wrong.

But please, if anyone has anymore information please contribute to the Wiki on Multimeters at http://www.diyaudio.com/wiki/index.php?page=Multimeter

 

[Vovk Z]

Building power amplifiers doesn't something special. Mostly you have to measure U, R. You typically need any popular DMM, plus oscilloscope, plus it is desurable to have dedicated RLC-meter. It is ok if your DMM has a capacitance function too, but better to have special RLC-meter, or at least some cheap Chinese multy-tester.

 

[H713]

Building power amplifiers doesn't something special. Mostly you have to measure U, R. You typically need any popular DMM, plus oscilloscope, plus it is desurable to have dedicated RLC-meter. It is ok if your DMM has a capacitance function too, but better to have special RLC-meter, or at least some cheap Chinese multy-tester.

You realize that the last post in this thread was almost 20 years ago, right? That post was written when having a Pentium 4 made you the cool kid on the block.

 

[Vovk Z]

You realize that the last post in this thread was almost 20 years ago, right? That post was written when having a Pentium 4 made you the cool kid on the block.

It was shown to me like new post
I dont't usually look at date of post, because I guess forum info may be helpfull years ago.

 

[Winston65]

I've been a Fluke fan for many years.