Defective BK 2709B?

[jayjr1105]

Hi all.  I was excited to receive my first decent meter (B&K Precision 2709B) after owning a couple junkers that failed or were sporadic.

I loved the safety features, accuracy, speed, and the wide capacitance reading range of the BK.

Unfortunately mine seems to be way off when reading all kinds of caps over 100uf.

It read a 830uf polymer cap @ 350uf, a 3300uf electrolytic cap at 2000uf, and a 470uf electrolytic cap around 300uf.

I realize DMM's aren't super accurate with capacitance and before you tell me this is somewhat normal, let it be known that I have a $20 amazon meter and a UEI meter reading these caps almost dead on.

I really wanted to like this meter, the probes are amazing compared to my previous ones.  Even the build quality is not as bad as some made it out to be.

Should I simply be requesting a replacement asap from the seller?  I bought it at testequipmentdepot.com


**EDIT** Tinkering around with it more, I noticed it's much more reliable if autorange is enabled when in capacitance mode.  Also, it hates if I use jumper cables in addition to the leads.  If I just use the leads by themselves on the caps, it's a ton better.  Not sure what I think about this whole process yet.

[jayjr1105]

Made a video of the flaw guys.  What do you think?

https://youtu.be/tQsrcrnM32w

[jayjr1105]

I know I didn't get any feedback on this but I wanted to report back on a resolution.  I sent the meter away to B&K and they looked at it for a week.  They were able to reproduce the issue with the capacitors I sent along and with another meter as well.  Apparently the fix is to simply use shorter leads.  The stock 2709B probes are 4-5ft long if I remember correctly but the tech working on it said the issue went away when he used 2-3 ft probes.  They are going to send me a fresh pair of 24"-36" leads.  I guess this is acceptable, especially since I purchased a nice LCR meter in the meantime.