B&K Precision bench multimeters, good?

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For one, it powered up taking about a zillion measurements per second, so the display was a blur. It took a lot of menu flogging to get the rate down to human levels, and that setup couldn't be saved. And one of the three units crashed, just displayed some goofy diagnostic message.

My Fluke 8845A is great.

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The Keithley is the source, and is supposed to be outputting 10.0000 volts. Both the Fluke and the Keithley agree that it's way off when there's a little RF around.

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Yeah, the menu control's not the greatest. I've got other test gear that doesn't remember what I was doing last, that seems a common failing.

Any issues with the accuracy?

George H.

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Sorry, I meant the 34410A (the 34401A is the predecessor). It's LXI Class C compliant as well as having USB.

Not too bad for such a nice instrument.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Dang, that sucks. I thought Keithley was a leader in test and measurement.

Is there some dynamic that can go wrong when a company gets too big, or too old?

George H.

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Don't know about Keithley. But some other companies clearly have become too complacent. When I bought my last scope and had to shun Tektronix for the first time I could not believe it. They honestly thought that in this day and age they could get away with 4k of sample memory and still charge 50% more than the Asians (who had 25k standard). That's like seeing a new car in a showroom with naugahide seats.

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I'm getting disappointed with Tek too. We just bought a $50K LeCroy scope.

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Of course you know that tek and keithley are now the same company... :^(

George H.

Hmm, and it's on sale for under $1k. Tempting, tempting ...

That line started out making test equipment for radio repair, and later, for TV shops. Things like their E200 signal generator. It was about the same class as Heathkit, without the fun of putting it together.

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Fluke, too.

B&K is selling mostly rebranded Asian equipment nowadays.

I've had good results from the Thurlby-Thandar Instruments 1906 5-1/2 digit multimeter. It's ten years since I've bought one, but Farnell Australia still seems to offer it - though they've not got any in stock - for $A1,378.27, which might be $US 1450. It does do true RMS and Kelvin four terminal resistance measurements.

Clive Sinclair was involved in the start-up of Thurlby-Thandar, but the guys involved were smart enough to stop him from wrecking the quality of what they shipped.

This is an eye-opener. I have seen them around and took for granted that they are Bruel&Kjaer. Only now I realize that the B&K rather stands for Philip Ban & Carl Korn.

Regards, Mikko

I have this one which seems to be just as accurate as the B&K:

I bought it because it is one of the very few meters with backlight and 20A current handling capability.

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You are not the real John Larkin....

Is the display big and easy to read out? I started needing glasses at age 40 and then LCD became much less pleasant than VFD, even when backlit they just don't have the same contrast.

Does the build quality look ok?

Get a Fluke while they are still good, and still made in USA.

Note how nice the Fluke display is, and how crashed the Chinese Keithley software is.

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Yeah, it's arrogant of them to brain damage a scope on purpose to hit a not-so-good price point. RAM is dirt cheap nowadays.

We went shopping for a 4-channel 1 GHz scope, and bought the Rigol. It was better and cheaper than the Agilent or Tek equivalents.

It comes with a few of these wonderful probe holders:

So, we've spent over $60K on non-Tek scopes in the last year.