What was your first multimeter or voltmeter?

[rrinker]

 This was my first, the kit was $1 or $2 cheaper than the assembled one so I got the kit.


It might be buried in a box somewhere, I'll have to look. Love that top voltage range, 1000V - not on your life. Even then I knew better than to try and use that thing for even 120V. (I got this when I was about 9)

[Conrad Hoffman]

I can't remember my first meter, probably a Heathkit VTVM, the horizontal one, but my first DVM was the Fluke 73 when it first came out. It's still on my bench, still accurate and still the most used tool I've got.

[artag]

Mine was a tiny cheap Japanese 1k/volt, very commonly rebadged at the time. I was very proud of it (I was about 10) but killed it fairly quickly : I tried to measure spark plug voltage which it appeared to survive, but the next use on mains vaporised the pcb. I think I'd blown the rectifier.

The replacement was a secondhand AVO multiminor, probably already 20 years old when I got it. It was made of tougher stuff, and I still have it.

First digital was a fluke 75, bought faulty at a hamfest. Fixed it and still use it regularly - I love that form factor. Many clones have failed to beat it (I still prefer it to my series II fluke 79 - they made the mistake of putting Hz before DCV. Which do you use most ?)

[wraper]

I had one like on the picture. IIRC it was made in 1964 or 1966.

[mmagin]

Radio Shack / Tandy Micronta 22-201U 20Kohms/volt analog

Dave.

I think I had a very similar model.  The crappy test leads were always breaking.  I guess it wasn't terrible otherwise.
It was so much better when my Dad got a Fluke 77 a couple years later (which I had unlimited use of).  That meter is still working just fine, some 33 years later or so.

[jhalar]

My first multimeter was a Tandy kit I put together in 1980 when I was 13.
This was my first kit. It still works.

[HighVoltage]

My first Multimeter came from the German Army
Made by Hartmann& Braun in Frankfurt Germany, probably in the early 1960s

Here are some pictures of it

[mtdoc]

[Cubdriver]

My first multimeter was a Tandy kit I put together in 1980 when I was 13.
This was my first kit. It still works.

Perfect!!  You saved me from searching for a picture - that's the exact same one I started out with, too, though a few years earlier than you ('77-'78ish).  It's lurking about somewhere, though at some point 30+ years ago I was carrying it down stairs on a pile of stuff (lazy man's load) and it took a header.  The plastic faceplate popped off the meter movement when it hit the ground and the pointer got mangled.  I straightened it out as best I could, but you still had to rezero it for every scale as it was not exactly straight when I was done.

-Pat

[HP-ILnerd]

This guy (still works fine, too) :

[tkuhmone]

My first multimeter was from Hung Chang. Cannot remember exactly the model, might have been "HC3500T"

[TiN]

My first, soviet meter



Second, noname 890G



Third, F87V (still have it)



Forth,fifth,sixth,seventh... K2001s.  (still have them all, about to sell this year)



Eigth (and nine), K2002 (still have these)



Ten (and eleven) 3458A (keepers)

[CatalinaWOW]

My first meter was an analog, house brand from Allied Radio.  It failed a concrete floor drop test by breaking the meter pivots, and was replaced by another analog meter, similar to one of the Radio Shack models shown above.  It was a long time before I saw the need for the transistor test function in the new DMMs, but did envy the capacitor test function.  The hobby budget was small at the time and so the first DMM was picked up as a pile of parts at an electronics swap meet.  There were pieces of three Beckman Instruments Circuitmate DM27 XL deemed beyond economic repair that I picked up for about $5 as I remember.  The photograph is the working result.  The counter feature is an occasionally useful bonus.  No back was in the parts pile so this meter has had a back off and on through the years as I build something sort of workable that then falls by the wayside.  You can see the remnants of tape around the meter used to hold some of the back candidates on.   It has since been replaced by newer and better meters (I may have more but definitely not better than TiN), but still worked until the nine volt battery connector negative lead fatigued open.  Just haven't gotten around to fixing.

[HighVoltage]

This was my first digital meter
Supertester 680 D, Made in Germany by ICD

And it still works
A long time ago, I installed new Hirschman 2 mm plugs and replaced the cables a few times but the tips are are still original.

[hendorog]

My first multimeter was from Hung Chang. Cannot remember exactly the model, might have been "HC3500T"

Same here - HC-3030S. I haven't seen this for years and just found it. The batteries still have some charge and haven't leaked too badly.
It still works on the original batteries - although the ohm adjust pot was seized and needed to be freed up.

[cat87]

When I was knee high, I managed to scrounge up enough money to get me a cheap  Chinese Sanwa clone. This was somewhere in the late 90's. I blew up the meter in so many ways, that even now I'm amazed of how it performed. Also, in many cases, I had no idea what the hell I was doing, so you can imagine that poor multimeter  had it's share of   

Growing up, I felt the urge to go digital. I had my sights on what seemed like the best multimeter on the market ( flea market, that is) It was a DT 9208A.  Complete with transistor tester and capacitance meter.

One late evening, its life was cut short due to it being exposed to 220V AC....while being in continuity mode. I thought I had it in Volts mode. Oooops. However, when I took it apart, despite having no real input protection, the case somehow held the angry pixies inside. No fire, no nothing.

Since then, I've had a pair of the cheapest smallest Uni-t DMMs for regular use


...and use an HP 3478A for precision work.

[gamalot]

MF10A

me too

[schmitt trigger]

For me, it was a Micronta 22-206 FET VOM like the one on the photo. (photo came from an Ebay auction)

I was still in college, and I had to work many odd jobs to save enough to purchase it.

Worked fine for many years, but the plastic case started to disintegrate. To this day I ignore what happened, but the plastic material simply started to fragment.
Patched it up with tape until one of the banana connectors failed.

[joeqsmith]

I have not seen mine yet, so here it is:



I think I bought it in 1977, back in those glorious days before anyone had heard of "safety". I never blew any fuses and I never electrocuted myself. In those long distant school days "Tandy" was an Aladdin's cave of things I could only dream about, but after admiring it for months that meter eventually fell within my budget and I took it home. I've kept it ever since.

This was my first brand new meter I received for my birthday.  Before this I had an old VTVM that was given to me.

[NiHaoMike]

Started out with a basic Radio Shack mini autoranging DMM, back in 3rd grade or so, when I moved on from building kits to designing my own circuits. It didn't measure current, so it wasn't long before I got a cheap Harbor Freight for that. Ended up using those meters for many years, then in high school, I got a Mastech since the "kid's toys" I have been using were easily confused by noise, plus having temperature measurement, capacitance measurement, and data logging was nice. That ended up being my primary DMM throughout college. After that, I got a Radio Shack AC/DC clamp meter since I had to do some automotive work. Most recently, I got a Mooshimeter mainly for its power measurement capability.

[tggzzz]

My first voltmeter was an incandescent lightbulb. Seriously. I used it for half a decade until I could afford something more conventional.

At school, when we needed to measure voltage to 0.1%, we used a NiFe cell, a 1m piece of resistance wire and and ruler, and a 1.0186V standard cell.  Seriously.

See my .sig and change "span" to "voltmeter

[HighVoltage]

My first voltmeter was an incandescent lightbulb. Seriously. I used it for half a decade until I could afford something more conventional.

At school, when we needed to measure voltage to 0.1%, we used a NiFe cell, a 1m piece of resistance wire and and ruler, and a 1.0186V standard cell.  Seriously.

See my .sig and change "span" to "voltmeter

How funny

On that level, my first voltmeter was my tongue,  , long before I had a real multimeter, I knew how full a 9V battery was. Also, we had a lot of 4.5V batteries in Germany in those days of my childhood and the tongue pretty much measured them as well.

[VK5RC]

One of the EEs in my Ham Radio Club seriously built a Tube transmitter many years ago without a multimeter - estimating the voltage by the kick off the back of his hand FFS

[tggzzz]

My first voltmeter was an incandescent lightbulb. Seriously. I used it for half a decade until I could afford something more conventional.

At school, when we needed to measure voltage to 0.1%, we used a NiFe cell, a 1m piece of resistance wire and and ruler, and a 1.0186V standard cell.  Seriously.

See my .sig and change "span" to "voltmeter

How funny

On that level, my first voltmeter was my tongue,  , long before I had a real multimeter, I knew how full a 9V battery was. Also, we had a lot of 4.5V batteries in Germany in those days of my childhood and the tongue pretty much measured them as well.

I'd forgotten that technique! But then, presuming those batteries were for bicycle lights, that's probably because I do my best to forget those dreadful lights.

[schmitt trigger]

One of the EEs in my Ham Radio Club seriously built a Tube transmitter many years ago without a multimeter - estimating the voltage by the kick off the back of his hand FFS

In that regard, we can claim that the world's first voltmeter was Galvani's frog legs.