Hickok 209A DC Probe resistor

[Sipolandis]

I received a 209A without any probes. Just finished building an AC probe, and am moving on to the DC probe.
Question: Why would they place the 3.3M resistor within the DC probe body? Why not place it in the cabinet at the DC probe connector?
Inquiring minds want to know.

[PartialDischarge]

Because that resistor is what drops the voltage, the connector is probably low voltage and the tip of the probe is high voltage

[Perrold]

The VTVMs of old would place a high value resistor in the probe in order to isolate the cable capacitance from the tip so you could go on and measure things like oscillator grid voltage without killing the oscillator. It's a very handy feature that I sometimes regret is not available with a DMM. A scope probe gets you most of the way there but being able to measure DC with a pF or less of loading, while certainly a corner case, is something that has few modern options. Usually I just add a 10M resistor to a DMM probe tip when this situation comes up instead of dragging out a VTVM.