Overheard an old timer say something at a trade show that made me rethink my whole test bench setup

I was at the AEA show in Dayton last month, just walking around. This guy who looked like he had been turning wrenches since the 70s was talking to a vendor about how he never uses those expensive automated testers for basic continuity checks. He said something like "if you can't trust a $20 multimeter and a good schematic, you don't understand the circuit well enough to fly it." That hit me hard because I probably spent $4,000 on a fancy analyzer last year that I barely use for half of my daily work. I spend more time reading menus on that thing than actually troubleshooting. Now I'm looking at my bench and wondering if I got sold a bunch of gear I don't need. Made me realize the fundamentals might be slipping with all this new tech. Has anyone else gone back to simpler tools after getting buried in expensive test equipment?

2 comments

2 Comments

alicebarnes3d ago

Pulled my old Fluke 87 out of a drawer last month after letting it sit for two years while I used a big touchscreen scope. Got tired of waiting for boot times and scrolling through menus for a simple voltage drop test. Sold the fancy scope to a guy who actually needs all those features for RF work. Now my bench has a multimeter, a cheap signal generator, and a logic probe I built from a kit. Found I catch more problems faster when I'm forced to think through the circuit instead of letting the machine guess for me. Sometimes the simple stuff just works better for everyday repairs.

gavinwood3d ago

You know what that reminds me of. My neighbor is this crusty old CB radio guy, the kind who still runs tubes in his gear. He was showing me his alignment setup last week and it was literally a screwdriver, a voltmeter from the 80s with a cracked screen, and a homebrew signal injector in a lunchbox. He tuned a whole UHF repeater with it in like fifteen minutes flat. Meanwhile I've got a spectrum analyzer that takes longer to calibrate than his whole process. Makes you wonder if all these bells and whistles are just making us slower.