[Test-Equipment] LCR meter recommendations?

[Randy AB9GO]

If you can find an AADE L/C meter it is a very nice unit up to 1.5 uf.  It
was designed by a ham and is most useful in the ranges used in RF
circuits.  You will need to find a used unit as the maker died 4 years ago
and no one picked up the product.

Randy AB9GO.


L/C Meter IIB

>From Amost All Digital Electronics, the L/C Meter IIB is a hand-held,
digital inductance and capacitance meter with a sixteen character LCD with
four digit resolution in each mode. Thus the maximum resolution for
inductance is one nanohenry (1 nH) and for capacitance one  tenth of a
picoFarad ( 0.1 pF).  Maximum measurable values are  150 millihenry (mH)
and  1.5 microfarad (uF). The unit features AUTOMATIC RANGING and
SELF-CALIBRATION. Each L/C Meter IIB is hand-assembled in the US.

SPECIFICATIONS

Range:

.001 uHy (1 nHy) to 100 mHy (most units measure to 150 mHy)
.010 pf to 1 uF (most units measure to 1.5 uF)
AUTOMATIC RANGING
Accuracy:
1% of reading typical
Typical means the average error of 83 different components compared to an
HP4275A digital L/C meter (test frequency 1MHz) for components ranging from
.1uHy to 1mHy and 2.7pf to .068uF,
B&K 878 digital LCR meter (test frequency 1KHz) for components ranging from
1mHy to 100mHy and .1uF to 1.6uF.
(L/C Meter II is characterized for hobby or non-critical commercial use)
SELF CALIBRATING

Display:
16 character LCD display module
Four digit resolution
Direct display in engineering units (ie: Lx= 1.234 uHy / Cx= 123.4 pF)

Operating modes:
When the Lx and Cx switches are off the ZERO switch acts as a MODE SELECT.

The following modes are sequentially selected
READY MEASUREn MODE - measure Lx or Cx and display in nano units when
applicable
READY MEASUREu MODE - measure Lx or Cx and display in micro units (ie:
.01000 uF instead of 10.00 nF)
READY MATCHn MODE -
first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in
nano mode
measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the difference
(Lz-Lx) or (Cz-Cx) in nano mode
READY MATCHu MODE -
first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in
micro mode
measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the difference
(Lz-Lx) or (Cz-Cx) in micro mode
READY MATCH% MODE
first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in
nano units
measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the percentage
difference
(Lx-Lz)/Lz*100 or
(Cx-Cz)/Cz*100 as percent.
range is -100% to +9999%
maximum resolution is 00.01%
L/C Meter IIB zeros out stray inductance and capacitance by storing their
values in RAM and subtracting them from the measured values. It can zero
out any value in its range allowing longer test leads and slightly improved
accuracy over L/C Meter II.

L/C Meter IIB works by measuring the shift in frequency caused by inserting
an unknown into it's oscillator tank circuit. A PIC16C61 micro-controller
measures the frequency before and after. It then computes the value of the
unknown using a floating point math package and displays the result on a 16
character intelligent LCD display.
L/C Meter IIB will NOT measure inductors designed for 60 or 120 Hz
applications such as power transformers, filter chokes or motors. The
minimum test frequency is about 20KHz and these devices have enormous core
losses at that frequency. The LC Meter IIB is powered by a 9V battery, not
included..