I always thought those cheap component testers were a gimmick

A friend gave me one last year, and it sat in my drawer until I had a tricky board from a 2012 receiver. Out of frustration, I clipped it onto a suspicious capacitor. It not only identified the part correctly but showed the exact leakage value my old meter missed. That $15 tool saved me an hour of tracing. Has anyone found other simple tools that turned out to be surprisingly good?

3 comments

3 Comments

benlewis23d ago

My dad swore by a cheap logic probe he bought at a radio shack going-out-of-business sale... it looked like a toy next to his fancy gear. He found a stuck address line on an old arcade board in minutes, something that had me staring at the schematic for hours. Sometimes the simple tool just shows you the one thing you were overthinking. I still keep that probe in my kit even though I mostly use a scope now.

gray_roberts11d ago

Sounds like @logan632 and your dad would get along.

logan63223d ago

Totally get that. My own cheap tester proved its worth by showing me how many perfectly good parts I'd thrown away over the years. Sometimes the right tool just makes you feel a bit silly for working so hard.