I’m not sure if it’s documented anywhere, but eBay searches allow multiple choice (logical OR) search terms. These are really handy for combining model numbers, spellings, etc. into a single search. For example, you could use “fluke (77, 79)” to find two different meter models at the same time, or “(Tektronix, Tek, Tektronics) (465, 465M)” to find six different variations for the 465M scope. Putting a minus sign in front of a term excludes listings that contain it (logical NOT), which is a great way to eliminate “nuisance” items while still casting a wide net. For example, to find items made by Miranda Video without seeing videos of Carmen Miranda, use “Miranda Video -Carmen”. Happy hunting!
No shit, after Dave's $50 oscilloscope video I managed to get a scope for under $50 eventually. It's this horrible thing www.amazon.com/Quimat-Oscilloscope-BNC-clip-Assembled-finished/dp/B07D2BPL2V
Aye, Herb. He's like Magneto, only his superpower is to manipulate the price of test gear at great distances and vacuum money from unsuspecting nerd-wallets.
Yeah. So funny to see this video 3 years later and half the meters he shows in this video are now double the price (or more). You'd think that obsolete previous-generation test equipment would depreciate over time, not appreciate. I think a lot of people have picked up the hobby of collecting test equipment without actually doing any electronics.
13:00 You're damn right, I got a bargain on 34401A (old HP make) it was sold for like $180 as not working, but on the picture it was powered up and showing couple of tens of mV, so basically what you expect when leads are not connected, seller clamined that it's not tested. I was actually looking for broken stuff so I can have fun repairing it, so I purchased it without much thinking. And once I got it, sure enough it's working perfectly fine, it is even in a perfect condition, not even a scratch and VFD display super bright, all of this would indicate that it was barely used. Only one thing I purchased it from USA to UK and shipping + tax + vat raised the price quite a bit and it wasn't that much of a bargain at the end but still cheaper than what I would have to pay for local auctions + in worse condition or missing the rubber bumpers.
That "for parts or not working" PM2534A at 22:35 may have sold for $60 but it was $461.09 for shipping via UPS! Never forget to check the cost of shipping. Some sellers put low prices on items but have ridiculous shipping costs. Another thing you can do when checking for gear is check the availability of the user and/or service manuals for the equipment. If you can find a unit that needs repair and the service manual shows it uses all standard parts that could easily be replaced you stand a better chance of getting it working if it needs repair.
Seems like most specialty stuff on Ebay isn't that great anymore. I was trying to buy some networking gear recently and after shipping is factored in, a used part was only like $20 cheaper than the damn thing is brand new (~$350). And they were selling for that much, I got outbid on 3 separate ones. Ancient test gear like multimeters from brands like HP or Keithley with dubious provenance routinely go for prices in excess of what you could get a modern Siglent or Rigol. I'd honestly trust a brand new Siglent DMM more than I would trust an HP from the 80's sold as untested/for parts.
@@ckm-mkc I know have been looking for a keithley 2000 and an hp/agilent E3631A, I could have gotten them for half the price that they are now about 2-3 years ago, drat
I would also say, there are a lot more repair learners wanting to get their hands on things these days...I like that. I don't like that it drives the market up, but I do like that people are learning and trying :)
Usefull knowledge for ebay: you can logically OR search statements. If you want things that contain either of the three you can write it as such: "(Keysight, Agilent,HP) multimeter" (without the quotes) and you can use that to exclude ORed statements by having a minus sign (-) in front of the parentheses. i.e. "multimeter (Keysight, Agilent,HP) -(refurbished, broken)" separate keywords are automatically ANDed Hope this helps!
18:30 actually, you’re better off excluding terms, so: 3457a -knife would cut out the bushland shit, and that way you’re still flexible on your main search
Awesome job *Wytnucls* ! That truly look like an excellent comparison table. - 2:20 LOL that Dave didn't really try to figure his user name _"White Knuckles"_ out until editing! :-P
Ebay is awesome. But local listings (Ebay Kleinanzeigen, Craigslist, Kigjiji) are even better. The selection is obviously smaller but prices drop $100 easy for the same stuff on ebay
A good tip for ebay is to use or searches like this (term1, term2, term3, "some exact thing", etc). You can use multiple of these along with single matches.
I just noticed that 2015THD in that spreadsheet and remembered that you said you were thinking about doing a video on THD measurement using that meter - I don't know about other people, but I'd love to see that video.
I had bought a class D car sub amp back in the year 2000 because nobody was bidding on it and the seller had it as working perfectly and no reserve. He had missed a few things in the description so I noticed that and read real deep into the ad to be sure it seemed real. The seller ended up on vaca after I bought if for a real stupid cheap bid (because there were no bidders due to the wrong description), but when he got back he shipped it to me..I still have it and it still "works a charm" as you would say. Back in the day a MTX 6500d class car sub amp was worth a lot more than I paid, $65!!!
When I used to do IT MAC (moves adds and changes) for a living, we often got projects where a branch or a facility was being closed. Our job was to remove all the IT equipment and send high dollar items (and hard drives) back to corp. What we quickly found out was that properly e-wasting IT gear in California is not cheap. So we started to just ebay all the stuff that was remotely viable. Sure a Cisco 2500 router is obsolete and slow today. But bundle it with a couple Catalyst switches and a few cables and you could sell it as a "CCNA lab" for $150 USD + shipping. Likewise, certain Dell and HP servers or Apple towers are worth parting out. Just the power supply or raid card can get over $100 USD. I basically made half my income from that for a few years. Especially in 2008-2010 when so many banks were merged. Lots of branch closings. The down side was that I had hundreds of computers and networking boxes all over my house, and the more volume you do in ebay transactions the more probability you will get a problem with a buyer, even with 'as is' or 'parts only' listings. So I exited that side gig.
I recently bought a fully equiped (ac and gpib) Fluke 8840A for ~70USD. It was listed for parts or repair. The button for front/back input broke off and fell inside and the black display cover was cracked. You only see it at an angle. And the button I glued back on. Measurements were in spec (last cal 15 years ago) For anyone that wants one, there are more of them on ebay for 50usd at the moment. Located in the US.
I really like HP 34401A, I own two of them, bought at a bit more than your average ebay prices, but it had good photos, clean, working display and shown to be working. And shipping with customs from US. Packaging was excellent. So I am happy. Also I like their form factor. I also locally got two old HP 3456A, which is really dated, but I got them very cheap and a bit slow, and they are my backup. I still have few more pieces to buy, possibly some good quality source measure unit, and good bench LCR meter. And again these will be probably some older HP models or Keightly ones. Even old ones for no apparant reason are kind of expensive.
I love my phillips meters! I got 5 of em - 2 pm2521, 2 pm2525 and a pm2534. -they're cheap, they are reliable - only the reflective display is a bummer. And 6.5 digits take a time to sample. It's not as speedy as new fancy ones. It's taking it's time.
The first thing you should do with any used test gear is take it apart and clean/vacuum it out. Especially with some of the older stuff. Heat kills electronics and dust and crud is like insulation.
The only problem I had with electronic vlog channels is just as soon as a popular channel recommends, showcases, or even just featured a piece of used equipment it either becomes very scarce or the price skyrockets on it making it harder for broke people to get really good test gear on the cheap!!!
You can usually pick up an Agilent 34401A 6.5 digit with a NIST cert for $600 from Alltest in New Jersey, USA. It’s tricky to get the re-certed each year.
WHAT??? Me thinking something had changed, I go and check out Alltest again. I don't know where you're getting that from. Every single 34401A unit they have for sale is $700, *sold AS-IS and untested.*
The PM2534s regularly go for less than 100 € in Germany (which has a notoriously bad pricing situation for used T&M gear), which really says a lot about how "valued" these are. 3457A will go for 300-400 €, in comparison. A 3478A is more expensive than the Philips...!
I come from China. In China, some seller may cooperate with shipping company and make money from postage. They can get a cut from higher postage to compensate lower item price.
In a lot of countries chosing "worldwide" is pretty useless as the shipping costs are prohibitive like 500 USD sometimes (and the sellers don't even think thats strange). Also that search save (and notification) feature is broken sometimes. Especially when you don't search in a category or without a search term it will not show anything when you use the saved search link, despite showing plenty of things when done manually.
If you buy a precise instrument, how do you know it's accurate? Do you have to send it into a PML to be calibrated? How much would it cost for this 6.5 digit DM?
in general, you can't trust single meter. Buy two. Not only they come handy but you can check them against each other - if they agree in measurements, you have a pair of good meters, which is always a plus. If they disagree, well, you know one of them is bad - at that point you can't trust either, so you buy third - to hopefully have 2 good and 1 bad.
I am waiting on a price (due today) on getting my 34401A and 34461A calibrated by Keysight in Oz. They offer two levels of Calibration ISO and a NATA (NIST) traceable version. I will drop some details in the EEVblog thread when I get them later.
Calibration adds significant value. Another business Dave didn't talk about as much is people who buy "for parts" test equipment and then test/repair it and send it out for a calibration. You can easily double or even triple the value of some items selling it as tested and traceable calibrated versus unknown.
Great video! When looking for test equipment I like to check the photos of the rear of the item to see if the "cal void" labels on the cover screws are intact. Lets you know if someome has been inside since calibration.
If you need them you will know the answer ;) If you make, service (test) or sell devices you need to be up in resolution and accuracy by a factor of 10 preferably on what you are testing. So a Calibrated or at least 'accurate' better resolution meter on the bench makes sense.
I'm still bitter, I used to own an old Philips Nixie tube multimeter. It sat on a shelf at a cellar work space my neighbor an friends rented next to where I lived. All the tubes worked, but there were some problems with it. It didn't show the correct readings unless you kept it on for 30 minutes or so. My friends binned it without asking me first. I bought it really cheap at a sale at Ericsson Microwave in Gothenburg for two or three dollars.
Almost got a gw instek afg2005 for €40 delivered almost new arb function gen. Then the seller's warehouse burned down... I checked the news, he wasn't lying. Got my money back
Maybe for stuff no one actually wants. Anything useful gets bid up fast. There are no deals to be found on GovPlanet unless you need a $15k Fire Dept ladder truck.
If the instrument has a fan, look for a picture of the back and see how much dirt is in the fan, if theres lots of dirt the device may have been on forever.
Ebay is far too popular to find deals like this, Craigslist or your local equivalent is a much better bet imo, especially if there's lots of tech/aerospace/etc. companies in your area. A few months back I picked up an HP 34401A for $220, deals like that are definitely around.
I just picked up an HP 16500B logic analyzer at a local retro computer meet for $100. Even though it's a 25 year old piece of kit, I'd pay that in shipping if I bought it on eBay, and I was hoping to find a used one at/under budget anyways. The guy just needed to clear out some space and already had another one, so I made an offer.
Out of curiosity, how useful are the older logic anylyzers in terms of applicability to more modern digital circuit troubleshooting and protocol decoding? I’ve been on the fence for years unable to decide if that is one of those items for a hobbyist to best buy used, even if several decades old, or whether the money would be better spent on a much newer logic analyzer.
Shipping - Arm + Leg (optional first born for overnight). Customs - whatever the agent feels, but no less than 20%. So far I'm up to like 550$.... But good idea anyways!
Yeah, I'd estimate 90% of ebay equipment that's reasonably priced (read, overpriced just a bit) has known problems and the sellers are unashamed liars.
Thanks Dave, The spreadsheet still doesn't give a rating for the speed or accuracy of the continuity tester OR what the voltage is on the probes when on the continuity range. Fluke 179 ( speed good) voltage up to 7vDC !!! powered the whole esp8266 board when testing IO pin connectivity.
I bought from surplustechmart some 6-7 years ago. I live in europe so i could not find a decent Logic analyser with 64-128 channels for under $500 from US (some shipping rates go to $1000). They had lots of badly smashed equiplent :) , but managed to find a HP 1662A in perfect working condition for very cheap.
It really makes one wonder what the life story of some of that smashed equipment is - so much smashed equipment from one small country just seems very odd! Perhaps the Israelis use test equipment for military test targets?! It just boggles the mind. Although what usually gets me when looking at Israel sourced eBay items (from the U.S.) are the often absurdly exorbitant shipping fees on much of the equipment - like a normally $1,200 used instrument in good condition might have a selling price of $200, seeming like a great deal, but will have a $10,000+ shipping charge! By comparison, other European sellers may only charge several hundred, or less, in shipping for the same item (depending upon actual weight).
got one of these that is a different brand but looks identical to the first multimeter in your vid. Only problem was that once powered off, it didn't retain any of the previous settings. Example, I like the continuity beep to happen under 20ohms so I had to go in and set that every time I turned it on. Was this just because I got a knock off brand or are all of these type like that? Thought maybe there'd be a small watch battery inside to hold the info.
Unfortunately e-bay gott rid of the unix wildcard ability in their searches some time ago which made it a lot more difficult to search for misnamed/mis-spelled auctions.
A few months ago Dave commented on a silly RUclips competition thingy with 2 channels out vying each other for new subs... Likely its from his research. Totally legit. - Eddy
Years ago, I bought a 100 MHz digital tektronix oscilloscope on a flea market. 15 €. Real bargain. The woman said "it was my son's TV but I don't know how it works, there's too many buttons. 20 €". Me : no 10 €, She, 15 €. Me : done.
The problem with buying on eBay is most sellers are evasive liars. They absolutely know that something is wrong with the equipment and you can see their listings are designed to evade highlighting the issues. Case in point, 6.5 DMM for sale. DMM has self test function. Ask the guy if DMM passes all self tests: "I didn't even know it had self test. It's already boxed up. I'm not taking it out of the box to run the self test. I upgraded to (multi thousand dollar unit) ... only reason I'm selling this one." You're replacing a DMM with a new multi thousand dollar unit and you're not aware this legacy DMM has self test? I call bullshit. And that's if you're lucky to get them to respond. Most of the time, they ignore the questions knowing there is something wrong.
So, if a 4.5 digit multimeter is not good enough, and you needed a 6.5 digit for your project...wtf are you doing? This is a real question for EE's out there. Is it like medical, or government stuff that need such high accuracy?
Try tracing a down a shorted component on a dense circuit board with many hundreds of components and no available schematic with only a 3.5 or 4.5 digit two-wire multimeter and you will fast appreciate the four-wire resistance mode and sub milliohm resolution of a 6.5 digit bench meter. The ability to quickly and reliably resolve down to the microhms range greatly simplifies determining where on the board you are “hot” versus “cold” and often gets you to within just one or two candidate components. Then there is the benefit of being able to use a 6.5 digit bench meter as the basis for testing and calibrating many other bits of test gear in your collection. And if you are working with lower DC voltages then the “greater than 10 Gigaohms” frintbend impedance offered by many bench meters can be a real lifesaver on high impedance circuits where the usual 10 Megohms impedance of a multimeter would have significantly loaded down the circuit under test, significantly altering your measured voltage. Bench meters also support configurable update rates and averaging parameters that makes getting quick and stable measurements both easier and faster.
Yes it a mystery with those crushed equipment from Israel, ones I found a fluke 87 with broken LCD . The price was total high. Wonder if it's someway to laundry money, or they just not know what the price is.
Gee thanks EEVblog... My meter just died and i was planning on going to ebay and bidding on one. But now i guess i have to wait a year for the market to calm down after this video. pfft not happy... Helping all the idiots that cant figure it out themselves... Stop doing ebay videos dave. winner winner chicken dinner :-P~
I have a 6 1/2, but really, what *practical applications*, I say again *practical applications*, not one-off experiments, does that have ? Nothing IRL needs this accuracy or is even stable enough to warrant measuring to this resolution so 4 digits is plenty. Anyway, great that these instruments are available at affordable prices.
When someone says powers on but can't test any further can mean it's faulty and we don't want to say or it can mean, we're lazy and powering it up is all we want to do. To confirm this check their other items if they have any and see if this is a standard thing they say with everything. If other things do say fully tested, then it's got problems.
My new (well, used) ebay bench multimeter arrived today, as coincidence would have it! I got an okay price on a GW Instek GDM-8251A. Not 6.5 digits, but better than my handhelds and way under $200. I'm gonna test =so hard= tonight!
My only big complaint with GW Instek is their universal refusal to release proper repair and calibration manuals for their products. Sometimes you can get lucky and find where somebody has scanned such and placed it online ... but in most cases you are going to have to reverse engineer the test instrument and design your own calibration procedures because you won’t get any help from the manufacturer if some adjustment is out of spec short of sending the used instrument back to the factory for kings ransom in shipping and service fees that often greatly exceed the original sale price of the instrument. That may be something that some may wish to factor into purchasing decisions since it makes repair and adjustment much more difficult than necessary.
I have heard about this! After I found the manual and read up about the calibration key (er, short) I'm not terribly afraid of having small inaccuracies. It settles down a lot when it gets warm. Almost everything I do doesn't require being super-precise (I build little radios and funky clocks most of the time). It's as precise as I need, really, and if it's out of whack it's consistent when I check against my other meters. It was cheap and I can always upgrade later. Your points are well-taken, though, and I did a lot of reading at the blog before deciding on this thing. If I need more or better precision I can always upgrade later on. I'm just glad to have something I can trigger that has a secondary display and some storage slots to help with matching components. I have the simple needs of a novice. If I grow up one day, maybe I'll get more fancy.
I WANTED A METER THAT HAS UNDER 0.1% ACCURACY FOR 2A DC CURRENT. NOT EASY TO FIND. I REMEMBER YOUR PRECISION FIXED 1A SOURCE BUT THAT DOESN'T HELP WITH 2A OR OTHER CURRENTS.
What on earth would I want a very cheap , apparently very accurate, uncalibrated voltmeter for? Are we creating electronics based projects or just buying bragging rights. Someone tell me if I am missing out doing 99.99999% of electronics without something like this.
Sometimes you need only resolution. Only relative accuracy, not the absolute. For example when matching parts... Even hobbyist people of some kinds may need it. I'm into DIY analog synthesizers and there it really helps to have something better than ordinary 4 1/2 meter, if you want it to stay reasonably in tune over more than just an octave or two...
Pls. call the old Dave! As time passes your skills as electronic engineer are faded i think...we except more advance electronic stuff from you, not just for kids stuff, tutorial how to buy on ebay! buy the way did you include shipping cost, who some times is 10 times more then the item price! . . . We are more advance then this Dave!
It really pisses me off that Americans often won't ship overseas, especially to "THEIR CLOSEST ALLY" Australia. So many times in the past I tried to buy something on eBay only to find they would not ship here. Thank god I have lost my interest in Electronics and the need for equipment. Anyone want a heap of pretty decent Amateur Radio gear and other stuff? LOL. My ex-wife was addicted to GraysOnline and bought all sorts of useless sh*t because "they were going cheap". Her online buying addiction was one of the things that finally broke us up.
The most common reason for no international shipping isn’t really a personal decision, it’s just that the U.S. is such a large domestic market that selling within the U.S. (with or without Canada included) is seldom a real limiting factor on salability such that if they have no prior experience dealing with Customs paperwork and international shipping that the unknown worries of Customs paperwork and figuring out what is, or is not, possibly covered by ITAR (arms related technology restrictions) is often seen as “not worth the hassle” by many smaller sellers. Essentially, why bother with all those unknowns and liability if it does not significantly add to either the sale price or significantly reduce the time to sale. But for what it is worth, most of us here in the U.S., regardless of political affiliation, do hold Australia in very high regard (in fact, Canada, UK, and Australia are all held in very high regard - and while NZ is often overlooked, I’d say we’d likely hold them in similar regard if they were not so often thought of, on this side of the pond, as an extension of Australia in much the same way that we often think of Canada as almost being a part of the U.S. due to how close our country’s ties are).
@@ethanpoole3443 ... I imagine US customs paperwork must suck. Anyway, I am out of the game and have not bought anything on eBay for a decade. About 11 years ago I used to buy dozens of Magellan handheld GPS units from a guy in the US for local (Australian) resale on eBay. I easily doubled, even tripled, my purchase price. He never seemed to have problems with customs, but maybe he was flying under the radar or things have changed on the last decade.
I’m not sure if it’s documented anywhere, but eBay searches allow multiple choice (logical OR) search terms. These are really handy for combining model numbers, spellings, etc. into a single search.
For example, you could use “fluke (77, 79)” to find two different meter models at the same time, or “(Tektronix, Tek, Tektronics) (465, 465M)” to find six different variations for the 465M scope.
Putting a minus sign in front of a term excludes listings that contain it (logical NOT), which is a great way to eliminate “nuisance” items while still casting a wide net. For example, to find items made by Miranda Video without seeing videos of Carmen Miranda, use “Miranda Video -Carmen”.
Happy hunting!
Shhhh it's a secret ;) Signed TEA.
I've been using eBay for decades and never knew that! Thanks for the tip.
EEVblog eBay price effect in 5, 4, 3...
They're gonna be going for $800 before long!
I just bought a good fluke 5 1/2 off eBay a few days ago..
Missed the price explosion by a few days... Wow, that was close.
- Eddy
HP 3455a ~$200
No shit, after Dave's $50 oscilloscope video I managed to get a scope for under $50 eventually. It's this horrible thing www.amazon.com/Quimat-Oscilloscope-BNC-clip-Assembled-finished/dp/B07D2BPL2V
We should convince everyone to not buy any until they're $200 or lower... That way they'll lower the prices!
"Behind the camera, while Dave's minions prepare a pallet of used 6.5 digit multimeters for an eBay flood, Dave decides on a vacation destination."
I deny any financial gain.
Sent from my iPhone in the Bahama's
I love your sense of humor Dave!
13:54 - $22,229.99 *_SHIPPING..._* ya, I'll have to think about that one! ;-P
Shipping’s where all of Oz gets screwed.
Thanks Dave for instantly jacking up the price of used test equipment world wide...
You're welcome
Aye, Herb. He's like Magneto, only his superpower is to manipulate the price of test gear at great distances and vacuum money from unsuspecting nerd-wallets.
@@EEVblog I guess it's now time to start selling my horde of good used test equipment before the prices crash!
Is good for guys that want to sell ah ah ah
Yeah. So funny to see this video 3 years later and half the meters he shows in this video are now double the price (or more). You'd think that obsolete previous-generation test equipment would depreciate over time, not appreciate. I think a lot of people have picked up the hobby of collecting test equipment without actually doing any electronics.
13:00 You're damn right, I got a bargain on 34401A (old HP make) it was sold for like $180 as not working, but on the picture it was powered up and showing couple of tens of mV, so basically what you expect when leads are not connected, seller clamined that it's not tested.
I was actually looking for broken stuff so I can have fun repairing it, so I purchased it without much thinking.
And once I got it, sure enough it's working perfectly fine, it is even in a perfect condition, not even a scratch and VFD display super bright, all of this would indicate that it was barely used.
Only one thing I purchased it from USA to UK and shipping + tax + vat raised the price quite a bit and it wasn't that much of a bargain at the end but still cheaper than what I would have to pay for local auctions + in worse condition or missing the rubber bumpers.
That "for parts or not working" PM2534A at 22:35 may have sold for $60 but it was $461.09 for shipping via UPS! Never forget to check the cost of shipping. Some sellers put low prices on items but have ridiculous shipping costs. Another thing you can do when checking for gear is check the availability of the user and/or service manuals for the equipment. If you can find a unit that needs repair and the service manual shows it uses all standard parts that could easily be replaced you stand a better chance of getting it working if it needs repair.
good luck, test equipment has gone through the roof
Seems like most specialty stuff on Ebay isn't that great anymore. I was trying to buy some networking gear recently and after shipping is factored in, a used part was only like $20 cheaper than the damn thing is brand new (~$350). And they were selling for that much, I got outbid on 3 separate ones. Ancient test gear like multimeters from brands like HP or Keithley with dubious provenance routinely go for prices in excess of what you could get a modern Siglent or Rigol. I'd honestly trust a brand new Siglent DMM more than I would trust an HP from the 80's sold as untested/for parts.
Yup, I bought a 6 1/2 digit HP & Keithley for about $350 for the two, good luck finding any for that price.
@@ckm-mkc I know have been looking for a keithley 2000 and an hp/agilent E3631A, I could have gotten them for half the price that they are now about 2-3 years ago, drat
I would also say, there are a lot more repair learners wanting to get their hands on things these days...I like that. I don't like that it drives the market up, but I do like that people are learning and trying :)
Usefull knowledge for ebay: you can logically OR search statements.
If you want things that contain either of the three you can write it as such:
"(Keysight, Agilent,HP) multimeter" (without the quotes)
and you can use that to exclude ORed statements by having a minus sign (-) in front of the parentheses.
i.e. "multimeter (Keysight, Agilent,HP) -(refurbished, broken)"
separate keywords are automatically ANDed
Hope this helps!
18:30 actually, you’re better off excluding terms, so: 3457a -knife would cut out the bushland shit, and that way you’re still flexible on your main search
Thanks Dave!!! Thank you for driving up the cost of test equipment for all. Just because you needed to create a video?? Thanks
Roll of the dice on the cheaper units. Lots of good advice in this video. Experience pays off.
Awesome job *Wytnucls* ! That truly look like an excellent comparison table. - 2:20
LOL that Dave didn't really try to figure his user name _"White Knuckles"_ out until editing! :-P
Ebay is awesome. But local listings (Ebay Kleinanzeigen, Craigslist, Kigjiji) are even better. The selection is obviously smaller but prices drop $100 easy for the same stuff on ebay
A good tip for ebay is to use or searches like this (term1, term2, term3, "some exact thing", etc). You can use multiple of these along with single matches.
I just noticed that 2015THD in that spreadsheet and remembered that you said you were thinking about doing a video on THD measurement using that meter - I don't know about other people, but I'd love to see that video.
I had bought a class D car sub amp back in the year 2000 because nobody was bidding on it and the seller had it as working perfectly and no reserve. He had missed a few things in the description so I noticed that and read real deep into the ad to be sure it seemed real. The seller ended up on vaca after I bought if for a real stupid cheap bid (because there were no bidders due to the wrong description), but when he got back he shipped it to me..I still have it and it still "works a charm" as you would say. Back in the day a MTX 6500d class car sub amp was worth a lot more than I paid, $65!!!
When I used to do IT MAC (moves adds and changes) for a living, we often got projects where a branch or a facility was being closed.
Our job was to remove all the IT equipment and send high dollar items (and hard drives) back to corp.
What we quickly found out was that properly e-wasting IT gear in California is not cheap. So we started to just ebay all the stuff that was remotely viable.
Sure a Cisco 2500 router is obsolete and slow today. But bundle it with a couple Catalyst switches and a few cables and you could sell it as a "CCNA lab" for $150 USD + shipping.
Likewise, certain Dell and HP servers or Apple towers are worth parting out. Just the power supply or raid card can get over $100 USD.
I basically made half my income from that for a few years. Especially in 2008-2010 when so many banks were merged. Lots of branch closings.
The down side was that I had hundreds of computers and networking boxes all over my house, and the more volume you do in ebay transactions the more probability you will get a problem with a buyer, even with 'as is' or 'parts only' listings. So I exited that side gig.
I recently bought a fully equiped (ac and gpib) Fluke 8840A for ~70USD. It was listed for parts or repair. The button for front/back input broke off and fell inside and the black display cover was cracked. You only see it at an angle. And the button I glued back on. Measurements were in spec (last cal 15 years ago)
For anyone that wants one, there are more of them on ebay for 50usd at the moment. Located in the US.
I really like HP 34401A, I own two of them, bought at a bit more than your average ebay prices, but it had good photos, clean, working display and shown to be working. And shipping with customs from US. Packaging was excellent. So I am happy. Also I like their form factor.
I also locally got two old HP 3456A, which is really dated, but I got them very cheap and a bit slow, and they are my backup.
I still have few more pieces to buy, possibly some good quality source measure unit, and good bench LCR meter. And again these will be probably some older HP models or Keightly ones. Even old ones for no apparant reason are kind of expensive.
Dave, the only people this video helps is Ebay brokers who use this as info to mark up the prices.
Thanks Dave, I bought that meter at 25:21 and picked it up today ;)
I love my phillips meters! I got 5 of em - 2 pm2521, 2 pm2525 and a pm2534. -they're cheap, they are reliable - only the reflective display is a bummer. And 6.5 digits take a time to sample. It's not as speedy as new fancy ones. It's taking it's time.
btw. you can swap the front and back-terminals.
The first thing you should do with any used test gear is take it apart and clean/vacuum it out. Especially with some of the older stuff. Heat kills electronics and dust and crud is like insulation.
The only problem I had with electronic vlog channels is just as soon as a popular channel recommends, showcases, or even just featured a piece of used equipment it either becomes very scarce or the price skyrockets on it making it harder for broke people to get really good test gear on the cheap!!!
You can usually pick up an Agilent 34401A 6.5 digit with a NIST cert for $600 from Alltest in New Jersey, USA.
It’s tricky to get the re-certed each year.
WHAT??? Me thinking something had changed, I go and check out Alltest again.
I don't know where you're getting that from. Every single 34401A unit they have for sale is $700, *sold AS-IS and untested.*
The reason there's no Keithley 2015THD for the $400 mark I got mine at is because your review of that meter got em all bought up. Struth.
I love how Clive's "dinky" meter is one of the top listed moldymeters on eBay.
Philips equipment is great and way undervalued. I've got an excellent PM6666 frequency counter for under $100!
The PM2534s regularly go for less than 100 € in Germany (which has a notoriously bad pricing situation for used T&M gear), which really says a lot about how "valued" these are. 3457A will go for 300-400 €, in comparison. A 3478A is more expensive than the Philips...!
I come from China. In China, some seller may cooperate with shipping company and make money from postage. They can get a cut from higher postage to compensate lower item price.
I recommend Equipnet. I bought good items through them here in the UK.
Lol, someone doesn't look at shipping costs too much.
He's browsing US products while in Australia because most of his viewers are in the US. Shipping would be 1/10th of the cost for them.
In a lot of countries chosing "worldwide" is pretty useless as the shipping costs are prohibitive like 500 USD sometimes (and the sellers don't even think thats strange).
Also that search save (and notification) feature is broken sometimes. Especially when you don't search in a category or without a search term it will not show anything when you use the saved search link, despite showing plenty of things when done manually.
Like everything else, make sure you have standards to compare them to, otherwise you have no idea how accurate it is.
What's happened to Mail Bag Monday? (Every Monday!)
He's in Australia. Australia has only got one or two Mondays a month. :D
They are on my channel instead now, eh Dave😉
If you buy a precise instrument, how do you know it's accurate? Do you have to send it into a PML to be calibrated? How much would it cost for this 6.5 digit DM?
in general, you can't trust single meter. Buy two. Not only they come handy but you can check them against each other - if they agree in measurements, you have a pair of good meters, which is always a plus. If they disagree, well, you know one of them is bad - at that point you can't trust either, so you buy third - to hopefully have 2 good and 1 bad.
Emona in AU charge AUD187 to do a 5.5DMM calibration, so I guess for 6.5 maybe less than AUD300.
If you have reference standards, you can check them against those.
I am waiting on a price (due today) on getting my 34401A and 34461A calibrated by Keysight in Oz. They offer two levels of Calibration ISO and a NATA (NIST) traceable version. I will drop some details in the EEVblog thread when I get them later.
Calibration adds significant value. Another business Dave didn't talk about as much is people who buy "for parts" test equipment and then test/repair it and send it out for a calibration. You can easily double or even triple the value of some items selling it as tested and traceable calibrated versus unknown.
I think I gave a whopping $75 for mine several years ago. And it works great!
Great video! When looking for test equipment I like to check the photos of the rear of the item to see if the "cal void" labels on the cover screws are intact. Lets you know if someome has been inside since calibration.
Fantastic Dave. What applications require voltage, current, resistance measurements to 6 1/2 digits?
If you need them you will know the answer ;) If you make, service (test) or sell devices you need to be up in resolution and accuracy by a factor of 10 preferably on what you are testing. So a Calibrated or at least 'accurate' better resolution meter on the bench makes sense.
I have any example video, testing a simple 9v battery
I'm still bitter, I used to own an old Philips Nixie tube multimeter. It sat on a shelf at a cellar work space my neighbor an friends rented next to where I lived. All the tubes worked, but there were some problems with it. It didn't show the correct readings unless you kept it on for 30 minutes or so. My friends binned it without asking me first. I bought it really cheap at a sale at Ericsson Microwave in Gothenburg for two or three dollars.
Almost got a gw instek afg2005 for €40 delivered almost new arb function gen. Then the seller's warehouse burned down... I checked the news, he wasn't lying. Got my money back
GovPlanet is fantastic if you're in the US! I've seen $5k stuff going for $20.
Maybe for stuff no one actually wants. Anything useful gets bid up fast. There are no deals to be found on GovPlanet unless you need a $15k Fire Dept ladder truck.
Prices already jumped on 3478a's
If the instrument has a fan, look for a picture of the back and see how much dirt is in the fan, if theres lots of dirt the device may have been on forever.
Ebay is far too popular to find deals like this, Craigslist or your local equivalent is a much better bet imo, especially if there's lots of tech/aerospace/etc. companies in your area. A few months back I picked up an HP 34401A for $220, deals like that are definitely around.
If you develop an addiction the EEVBlog has a Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread.
I just picked up an HP 16500B logic analyzer at a local retro computer meet for $100. Even though it's a 25 year old piece of kit, I'd pay that in shipping if I bought it on eBay, and I was hoping to find a used one at/under budget anyways. The guy just needed to clear out some space and already had another one, so I made an offer.
Out of curiosity, how useful are the older logic anylyzers in terms of applicability to more modern digital circuit troubleshooting and protocol decoding? I’ve been on the fence for years unable to decide if that is one of those items for a hobbyist to best buy used, even if several decades old, or whether the money would be better spent on a much newer logic analyzer.
Shipping - Arm + Leg (optional first born for overnight). Customs - whatever the agent feels, but no less than 20%. So far I'm up to like 550$.... But good idea anyways!
When they say it's purchased from an estate sale that's often code for "It doesn't work but I don't want to say so".
Yeah, I'd estimate 90% of ebay equipment that's reasonably priced (read, overpriced just a bit) has known problems and the sellers are unashamed liars.
Thanks Dave, The spreadsheet still doesn't give a rating for the speed or accuracy of the continuity tester OR what the voltage is on the probes when on the continuity range. Fluke 179 ( speed good) voltage up to 7vDC !!! powered the whole esp8266 board when testing IO pin connectivity.
I bought from surplustechmart some 6-7 years ago. I live in europe so i could not find a decent Logic analyser with 64-128 channels for under $500 from US (some shipping rates go to $1000). They had lots of badly smashed equiplent :) , but managed to find a HP 1662A in perfect working condition for very cheap.
It really makes one wonder what the life story of some of that smashed equipment is - so much smashed equipment from one small country just seems very odd! Perhaps the Israelis use test equipment for military test targets?! It just boggles the mind. Although what usually gets me when looking at Israel sourced eBay items (from the U.S.) are the often absurdly exorbitant shipping fees on much of the equipment - like a normally $1,200 used instrument in good condition might have a selling price of $200, seeming like a great deal, but will have a $10,000+ shipping charge! By comparison, other European sellers may only charge several hundred, or less, in shipping for the same item (depending upon actual weight).
@@ethanpoole3443 ... maybe they need a full military escort the ship the item out of their borders. :) :) :)
Surely big Dave just has a few spare knocking around the lab?
got one of these that is a different brand but looks identical to the first multimeter in your vid. Only problem was that once powered off, it didn't retain any of the previous settings. Example, I like the continuity beep to happen under 20ohms so I had to go in and set that every time I turned it on. Was this just because I got a knock off brand or are all of these type like that? Thought maybe there'd be a small watch battery inside to hold the info.
Wow. That $2,699 Advantest meter had a shipping price of $22,229.99. That's insane.
Great tips! Thanks Dave!
Unfortunately e-bay gott rid of the unix wildcard ability in their searches some time ago which made it a lot more difficult to search for misnamed/mis-spelled auctions.
Why would he need anything at home with all these awesome equipment you guys have at the office?
Time to list my excess 3458A's :)
You'll have to pry my Keithley 196 from my cold, dead hands.
I feel much the same with respect to my Keithley 2000 6.5 digit multimeter. Enjoy your 196!
Right! :-)
Hey Dave, where can I get a like new Ferrari for the price of an old used Honda?
Do a video on soldering stations
"Yeah, and this is eBay Australia. Nothing but knives"
Ummm... no that is just David2 *hinting to you* that you don't pay him enough! - 0:20
And he's hinting at being "paid" in free gear.
Good luck, everything I find is in Britain or the EU and the postage exceeds the cost.
the best? 3458A ! That's National Mertology Institute type of instruments :-)
Might amuse you that the systemd talk in your recommended looked interesting, so i watched it XD
Get on eBay and pick some of this stuff up fast. I think the techmoan effect might take place here...
9:50 pewdiepie in search
dave you are caught!
A few months ago Dave commented on a silly RUclips competition thingy with 2 channels out vying each other for new subs... Likely its from his research.
Totally legit.
- Eddy
Haha, Loveland, right up the road...
And you definatley do not want a broken knob! Could really ruin your day. Which sucks if this happens to your own personal equipment let me tell ya!
Just like you sayed. Go and ask at your local university. I asked and got a nice Hameg HM203 for free.
We both got recommended The Tragedy of systemd
Years ago, I bought a 100 MHz digital tektronix oscilloscope on a flea market. 15 €. Real bargain. The woman said "it was my son's TV but I don't know how it works, there's too many buttons. 20 €". Me : no 10 €, She, 15 €. Me : done.
And still tried to down bid. Bravo. Lol
The problem with buying on eBay is most sellers are evasive liars. They absolutely know that something is wrong with the equipment and you can see their listings are designed to evade highlighting the issues.
Case in point, 6.5 DMM for sale. DMM has self test function. Ask the guy if DMM passes all self tests:
"I didn't even know it had self test. It's already boxed up. I'm not taking it out of the box to run the self test. I upgraded to (multi thousand dollar unit) ... only reason I'm selling this one."
You're replacing a DMM with a new multi thousand dollar unit and you're not aware this legacy DMM has self test? I call bullshit.
And that's if you're lucky to get them to respond. Most of the time, they ignore the questions knowing there is something wrong.
So, if a 4.5 digit multimeter is not good enough, and you needed a 6.5 digit for your project...wtf are you doing?
This is a real question for EE's out there. Is it like medical, or government stuff that need such high accuracy?
It's not just about accuracy, resolution is incredibly useful. See the video I recommend
@@EEVblog Thanks Dave. I use a 20 dollar Instek gdm-8135, so you can see how I was confused, lol.
PS..White Knuckles.....(weird screen name)
Try tracing a down a shorted component on a dense circuit board with many hundreds of components and no available schematic with only a 3.5 or 4.5 digit two-wire multimeter and you will fast appreciate the four-wire resistance mode and sub milliohm resolution of a 6.5 digit bench meter. The ability to quickly and reliably resolve down to the microhms range greatly simplifies determining where on the board you are “hot” versus “cold” and often gets you to within just one or two candidate components. Then there is the benefit of being able to use a 6.5 digit bench meter as the basis for testing and calibrating many other bits of test gear in your collection. And if you are working with lower DC voltages then the “greater than 10 Gigaohms” frintbend impedance offered by many bench meters can be a real lifesaver on high impedance circuits where the usual 10 Megohms impedance of a multimeter would have significantly loaded down the circuit under test, significantly altering your measured voltage. Bench meters also support configurable update rates and averaging parameters that makes getting quick and stable measurements both easier and faster.
What's the Quad-CPU Mobo behind you?
Yes it a mystery with those crushed equipment from Israel, ones I found a fluke 87 with broken LCD . The price was total high. Wonder if it's someway to laundry money, or they just not know what the price is.
That blog name is 'white knuckle' spelled phonetically.
Please, run an adblocker.
Gee thanks EEVblog... My meter just died and i was planning on going to ebay and bidding on one. But now i guess i have to wait a year for the market to calm down after this video. pfft not happy... Helping all the idiots that cant figure it out themselves... Stop doing ebay videos dave. winner winner chicken dinner :-P~
Awesome ! Keep it coming :)
I have a 6 1/2, but really, what *practical applications*, I say again *practical applications*, not one-off experiments, does that have ? Nothing IRL needs this accuracy or is even stable enough to warrant measuring to this resolution so 4 digits is plenty. Anyway, great that these instruments are available at affordable prices.
I must be really thick but I am struggling to understand what exactly is half a digit.
>
It means that the highest digit doesn't go all the way to 9.
Gold as usual
I got an 8842a in cal locally for $25 a few months ago. Scores!
Beauty!
When someone says powers on but can't test any further can mean it's faulty and we don't want to say or it can mean, we're lazy and powering it up is all we want to do. To confirm this check their other items if they have any and see if this is a standard thing they say with everything. If other things do say fully tested, then it's got problems.
Just can't resist constantly scrolling.. impossible to watch without getting screen sickness
User name "white Knuckles " on the blog?
My new (well, used) ebay bench multimeter arrived today, as coincidence would have it! I got an okay price on a GW Instek GDM-8251A. Not 6.5 digits, but better than my handhelds and way under $200. I'm gonna test =so hard= tonight!
My only big complaint with GW Instek is their universal refusal to release proper repair and calibration manuals for their products. Sometimes you can get lucky and find where somebody has scanned such and placed it online ... but in most cases you are going to have to reverse engineer the test instrument and design your own calibration procedures because you won’t get any help from the manufacturer if some adjustment is out of spec short of sending the used instrument back to the factory for kings ransom in shipping and service fees that often greatly exceed the original sale price of the instrument. That may be something that some may wish to factor into purchasing decisions since it makes repair and adjustment much more difficult than necessary.
I have heard about this!
After I found the manual and read up about the calibration key (er, short) I'm not terribly afraid of having small inaccuracies. It settles down a lot when it gets warm. Almost everything I do doesn't require being super-precise (I build little radios and funky clocks most of the time). It's as precise as I need, really, and if it's out of whack it's consistent when I check against my other meters. It was cheap and I can always upgrade later.
Your points are well-taken, though, and I did a lot of reading at the blog before deciding on this thing. If I need more or better precision I can always upgrade later on. I'm just glad to have something I can trigger that has a secondary display and some storage slots to help with matching components. I have the simple needs of a novice. If I grow up one day, maybe I'll get more fancy.
I WANTED A METER THAT HAS UNDER 0.1% ACCURACY FOR 2A DC CURRENT. NOT EASY TO FIND. I REMEMBER YOUR PRECISION FIXED 1A SOURCE BUT THAT DOESN'T HELP WITH 2A OR OTHER CURRENTS.
13:50 WTF? That Advantest listing has a shipping price over $22,000?? The hell are they smoking?
Well, cigars made of dollar bills obviously!
They all just doubled in price.
What on earth would I want a very cheap , apparently very accurate, uncalibrated voltmeter for? Are we creating electronics based projects or just buying bragging rights. Someone tell me if I am missing out doing 99.99999% of electronics without something like this.
Sometimes you need only resolution. Only relative accuracy, not the absolute. For example when matching parts... Even hobbyist people of some kinds may need it. I'm into DIY analog synthesizers and there it really helps to have something better than ordinary 4 1/2 meter, if you want it to stay reasonably in tune over more than just an octave or two...
You are not. Most home users don't need something like this, but there are some specialized uses. Stuff like this is more for industrial applications.
Thats not a multimeter.... THATS a multimeter :)
Pls. call the old Dave! As time passes your skills as electronic engineer are faded i think...we except more advance electronic stuff from you, not just for kids stuff, tutorial how to buy on ebay! buy the way did you include shipping cost, who some times is 10 times more then the item price! . . . We are more advance then this Dave!
It really pisses me off that Americans often won't ship overseas, especially to "THEIR CLOSEST ALLY" Australia. So many times in the past I tried to buy something on eBay only to find they would not ship here. Thank god I have lost my interest in Electronics and the need for equipment. Anyone want a heap of pretty decent Amateur Radio gear and other stuff?
LOL. My ex-wife was addicted to GraysOnline and bought all sorts of useless sh*t because "they were going cheap". Her online buying addiction was one of the things that finally broke us up.
The most common reason for no international shipping isn’t really a personal decision, it’s just that the U.S. is such a large domestic market that selling within the U.S. (with or without Canada included) is seldom a real limiting factor on salability such that if they have no prior experience dealing with Customs paperwork and international shipping that the unknown worries of Customs paperwork and figuring out what is, or is not, possibly covered by ITAR (arms related technology restrictions) is often seen as “not worth the hassle” by many smaller sellers. Essentially, why bother with all those unknowns and liability if it does not significantly add to either the sale price or significantly reduce the time to sale.
But for what it is worth, most of us here in the U.S., regardless of political affiliation, do hold Australia in very high regard (in fact, Canada, UK, and Australia are all held in very high regard - and while NZ is often overlooked, I’d say we’d likely hold them in similar regard if they were not so often thought of, on this side of the pond, as an extension of Australia in much the same way that we often think of Canada as almost being a part of the U.S. due to how close our country’s ties are).
@@ethanpoole3443 ... I imagine US customs paperwork must suck. Anyway, I am out of the game and have not bought anything on eBay for a decade. About 11 years ago I used to buy dozens of Magellan handheld GPS units from a guy in the US for local (Australian) resale on eBay. I easily doubled, even tripled, my purchase price. He never seemed to have problems with customs, but maybe he was flying under the radar or things have changed on the last decade.
Thanks for sharing :-)
It's pronounced "white knuckles".
👍👍👍