Hi I Got an email from an old gray bead who doesn't actually have a gravy but a great goatee apparently. Um, anyway said hey, why don't I do a video extolling the virtues of analog multimeters versus this newfangled digital rubbish? Oh okay, let's take a look at it. Are there still any advantages to your classic analog multimeters like this? like this? Classic Simpson 260 here the 6x LPM model for those playing along at home and your newfangled analog ones? your FET analog Vaughn's as they're called Volleys Volt ohmmeter and they have dual fit as we'll take a look at. Are there any advantages to these over you traditional modern one? Hmm.

Take a look now, of course. I've got a rather soft spot for analog meters, but I haven't used one in anger for a long, long time because Digital's just beat that I've got to admit, they beat them in practically every aspect and this is the first meter I ever owned the classic micron tar Daddy / RadioShack at 22 201 you ah brilliant 20 K ohms per volt. What was a 34r? Ain't no. it was like 24 range or something like that.

but hey, that's the one I First saved up my pocket money and bought when I was a kid. It still works well. There's companies that still make them, but basically nobody uses it anymore. Okay, flame comments invited if you're still using your classic analog multimeter.

But really, the digital ones just beat them in almost every aspect. So unfortunately it's much easier to say in what areas. The digital's are much better than analog. so I'll do that first, but then we'll look at.

Is there any advantage? Because a lot of people talk about the meter like the needle are for fast changing signals. You know, the wiggle-wiggle-wiggle year in them in the needle is much better than your digital meter. Well, is it. We'll find out later.

Now let's ignore for a minute the fact that most multimeters digital multimeters are Auto arranging these days and the analogs manual range in. But let's not worry about that because you can't get manual range in digital. Me now. of course, The first noticeable difference is the display.

The digital multimeter just tells you the voltage directly involves or the resistance or current or whatever it is with the analog. Of course, we've got the meter needle movement which goes across and you have to interpret the display. But not only that, you've got to actually zero the display as well. Using this little thing with your tongue at the right angle and tweak it and move that needle so that it's directly on the zero line there and that can change depending on the angle you have the meter at and the quality of your meter and everything else.

Anyway, I've set that up and you may actually see. The first thing here is that look you can see. That's why they have a mirror in there. Your good ones.

do they have a mirror? We've got what's called parallax error in there and You have to Actually, when you're using the meter, line it up so that the actual needle itself read to help you actually see it is directly over its mirror reflection. If you if it's off like that, you're viewing it at an angle, then you're gonna get an error. So its accuracy is only valid when you're actually using it over like that. So you know it's like right there it's just jeez.

I Don't miss having to zero out my meter and account for parallax error. It's just no contest. So let's actually measure a voltage here. We're going to measure five volts here, and well, how do you read this off here? Well, we've got it on the 10 volt range.

At the moment, this doesn't have a range double or I can show you a range double or later, which even which complicates it things even more. But on a 10 volt range, it's fairly easy because the scale over here actually says 10 right there. So eight six and then of course they're all color-coded so the black refers to the black scale up there. and then they've got the green and the blue.

and well, they've got a black up the top for the O's But of course you can read it off. So you know ten, Eight Six and you can see that's pretty much being on five but like, is it 5.0 five or is it like what I mean Granted, this is a 50,000 count display, but even a three a half digit two thousand count meter beats the pants of any analog meter in terms of resolution. And that's the thing with the resolution of this sight needle. What exactly is it? Well, you've got the needle width in there, and well, yeah, you kinda have to guess a bit.

but I'm guessing that there's at least 250 needle distances I like a needle widths in that sweep at least. So assuming that we've got five needle widths between each one of those scale graduations there, then that's a total of 250 across there. Five times 50. There, it's 250.

but even if you had, say, 500, that's still only naught point Two that represents a minimum resolution or eight sorry, a maximum resolution the highest resolution can get with this, of say not point two percent. or maybe if you'll use that lower one naught point four percent. That's kind of like the best resolution you can get. so that would be the equivalent of this digital meter over here.

Not having these two digits at all and only jut and having this digit here, the second half of the decimal place jump up by. for added four counts at a time, you wouldn't even be able to get one count on there. but all your Greybeards going to go. Yeah, but if I hold my tongue at the right angle I can see that it's you know, half a needle with the cross? Yeah, you can.

but I think no matter how good you are, you really can't get past that second decimal place there. So yeah, these things don't have the best resolution, but you know they're They're adequate for a lot of purposes. Just you know to see if you're in the ballpark. I Mean these things did for you know, 100 years or whatever.

before you think'll Digital multimeters came along and you can get analog meters like this. Start ripple at 6:30 Na. Now have what's called a range table. So instead of mode volts Ohms amps it works.

That's a twelve volt range. That's the three volt range, 60 volt range, etc. But if you put it volt amps / - then this twelve volt range becomes a six range and that gives you increased resolution because you you know needed needle can travel further and you can get a fictive lee a greater resolution. but the resolution of a digital even a $2.00 digital meter is still going to beat the pants off an analog.

But the other thing with these meter movements is that they don't have a scale for every one of the switch positions down here. So let's go for example, to the 25 volt range here. Where's 25 on this scale - 50 50? 10? It ain't there. Um, you have to actually use the 250 volt scale and take off that last digit there.

So it's 25. so you know here would actually be 10 volts at that point there. So you know, just another confusion of these analog meters. and you can come a guttering that if you haven't got your brain engaged and what about the accuracy of these things unlike the specified manufacturer's accuracy? Well unfortunately, look at the manual for this thing and it's about two percent hour for your DC volts.

So that's worse than pretty much your worst one hung low digital multimeter on the market. And if you get something a little bit better like this, triple at 6:30 N/a still only one and a half percent DC accuracy and that gets worse with ACS like three percent so it's still not three. four percent is quite common. Still not as good as a modern digital meter, but you wouldn't expect it.

But oh, it gets worse. You better gets worse. Let's just try and measure. Our humble is this to something which is trivial on a digital multimeter and you know, reasonably accurate.

They're not as accurate as DC Volts is always the most accurate thing on a digital meter and also these analog meters. But have a look at the scale here. For ohms, you've got to use this top one and those with a keen eye will realize that this is nonlinear. Look at this like this one's linear.

You know, Ten, Eight, Six, four right in equal increments. This one is not zero is now over here which is full scale which is back to front to what it is for DC volts. so that alone is confusing. And then it's The accuracy up here isn't too bad, but once you get down to here.

but if you're forced to go up in resistance and measure higher and higher and higher and higher, you get down to the point where the accuracy and resolution is just like borderline unusable. So let's actually measure a 10k resistor here. Let's actually put it on the 1k a range. which basically means that it's X.

It's the resistance of 1 K times the scale here. So the one over here would be 1 K 2 K 3 K and then 10 K. So we'll measure a 10k resistor here. But the annoying thing is not only did you have to zero the scale over here for the DC volts, you've actually got to short out the Ohms and then you've got to use the Ohms adjust knob, hold your tongue at the right angle, make sure there's no parallax error, get it right on 0 there.

trust me. I'm like lean over the cameras at a bad angle, but we're zeroed it on that range because the other ranges might be different. I'll show you that the sec and then if we're lucky, we can measure out 10k resistor and there it is up there it's 10k so it's a fair way down the scale here. So our accuracy and resolution is actually going to be less.

In fact, there's a bit error better error in that. Oh wow, What? That's not terrific. All the Simpsons letting us down. so let's to get a bit more resolution, we can do this.

We can go to the 10k range like this and you'll notice that it jumps up there. But uh-huh because it actually uses this. has two different batteries in it, a 1.5 volt D cell, and a 9-volt battery in there. And they're used on the different ranges and this one actually jumps up.

So we actually have two. Reesy row this. You notice it's way off the zero before, so if you just want to change ranges, we've got to tweak that down. Okay, now we're tweak that for zero.

Let's plug it in. and Tada, we can measure our 10k. That one's bang on. Look at that.

Ah, hold your tongue at the right angle. Slight our half and needles with half Abby's dick off. Oh no. Unfortunately for this venerable Simpson 260, which is quite common of its type, its maximum range was 10 or a maximum scale factor was 10 K here.

So you know if you want to measure 100 K Okay, you're gonna be over here. If you want to measure a Meg, it's gonna be all the way over here. Oh, so there you go. Am I trying to measure one Meg and you can see it's there.

But geez, you know if the meter, if you get half a needles with off, you can be off by like 10% It's just nuts. So there's definitely no contest in the resistance. and anyone who's using an analog meter to measure resistance. Wow Yeah, you know it's a painful experience and of course, they work okay for positive values.

But if you want to measure negative, well, let's measure negative 5 volts. It's easy on your digital meter. it just does it. Your analog, it goes hard in the other direction, and if you do it well too hard, you might damage your right meter movement and actually bend the needle in there.

But no, this. Simpson is fancy. Pantsy has got one of these newfangled polarity switches, so we can switch it to negative DC volts without having to change our leads around. Swap them, Beauty.

You know, the next thing about analog meters is that, well, they're not as high input impedance as your DC voltmeter and that becomes a real issue when you're trying to measure things in parallel in circuit. Let me demonstrate with Dave Cut. So analog meters will actually have their input impedance specified in ohms per volt. and you can see that down here: 20,000 ohms per volt DC And that's very typical of an analog meter like this: I Used to have a Dick Smith analog meter once that had a really sensitive meter movement and it was a hundred K ohms per volt.

But I don't think I've ever heard of one that's greater than 100 KS per volt. So 20 K owns provoked. Very typical. A really good one would be 50 and a real superb either be a hundred kos per volt.

But what does that mean? Think about analog meters is that they're the meter movement here apart from the Ohm scale which I'll talk about later is powered from your circuit under test. So the power to actually move this meter movement here actually comes from your circuit under test. So in this case, 20 K ohms per volt. So if you take 1 volt DC divided by 20 K that's actually 50 micro amps.

So it actually requires 50 micro amps to move that needle all the way over here and that 50 mi Gramps it's gonna come from the circuit you're testing. So if we have a look at Dave CAD here, if you're measuring a resistive divider in your circuit for example, then your probes are going to take 50 micro amps if the meter is all the way over like that, regardless of which range you're on. So there it is. It translates the 50 micro amps full-scale But what does that mean in actual terms of error? If you're measuring the voltage divider, well, you're effectively putting a resistor in parallel with the resistor in circuit under test.

And of course, this is exactly the same for your digital multimeter as well. But this one has a much higher input impedance or 10 mega ohms and nominal 10 Megan's input in input impedance on most of the voltage ranges, so it doesn't really affect anything but really high impedance circuit here. But let's demonstrate. Ok, so what I'm doing is I forgot a resistor divider here with 200 K resistors and I've actually tweaked them to be exactly the same.

And if we go up to the top here, you can see that we're feeding in precisely 10 volts and what if we measure in the middle of that? it should be 5 volts, but it's not. It's nine point, four point, nine, seven, seven volts and I'll leave those playing along at home to calculate if that is correct. For a 10 mega ohm input impedance or I think other 121 GW to check the specs, it could be like 11 mega ohms in parallel with that hundred K but you know there's not too much error there at all in that kind of measurement for a hundred K And of course, the higher the resistance you go, the more error there's going to be with that 10 mm in parallel. But let's try it with the analog meter.

All right. So let's check this out. We're measuring our top of our resistive divider up here. We're feeding our 10 volts R that's within the right angle.

that's within our four needles with half Abby's dick. So but let's measure the middle of the divider here and we expect straight up in the middle like we saw before. But what? what? What? Wha? What is that? That's pretty much bang on to four volts. So let's do the calculation here.

We're on the 10 volt range, which is going to give us an input impedance of 20 K ohms per volt. So 20 K times 10 volts there, which is 200 K. So we've got if this is a hundred K and 100 K, we've got 200 K in parallel with our 100 K here, which is Sixty Six Point Six 666. Okay, and if you do your voltage divider formula there, it works out to be no point.

Four faults and that's exactly what we're measuring. The error is enormous, but I will say that can also be advantageous, especially on the high sensitivity. Once the 50k or a hundred K ohms per volt, they can actually be better than you did. Then you tend me ohm at digital meters, because even this one, if you take its maximum range here of a thousand volts, you have to use the other jack over here for the thousand volts.

But that's okay. Thousand Times Twenty K is 20 meter. So this actually has twice the input impedance on that highest range as your typical digital meter, but on all the other lower ranges, forget it. it's much, much worse.

and you get that sort of huge amount of error and we can actually see that here on the various ranges. There we are: The 10 volt range 200 K if you're on the two and a half volt range 50 K grown 1 volt range 20 Cup Well, there it is. There's your 20 K ohms per volt range. But if we go right up to 500, you know we get in quite reasonable.

Now we're getting our standard 10 mega ohm input impedance and as I said, you go up to thousand volts and you're going to be getting your 20 meter. I Hear all the Greybeards saying, But analog meters beat the pants off Digital in terms of response, you can see the meat, the needle wiggle. Well, let's actually try that out and see if it can beat a fast responding bar graph on a digital meter. Alright, so what I'm feeding in is a 250 milli volt peak-to-peak sine wave superimposed on four volts DC offset.

So of course it's measuring that. 4 volts here, 4 volts. and let's have a look like you can clearly see the bar graph going to dead-ended meter movement going like that. but can you see it on the analog? Yeah, you're kind of can.

Maybe yeah. I Can kind of see a little bit of wiggle there. and if we take that up to say 10 Hertz No. Can't see diddly squat, but you can still see the digital bar graph.

You can still see that there's something there and you can see that the reading is fluctuating. So like no contest. Alright, let's drop the amplitude down to a hundred millivolts. Nope.

Still doing it. Still much more readable or de much more visible that there's something going on there on the digital meter. So much for your analog, but of course you know if you want your frequency to be 1 Hertz Of course. but you can see something's happening on your digital as well, so you know to actually see that there's something there.

What that is, you're not really sure because the meter movement takes time to actually move, but the digital meter doesn't just fine. If we take our amplitude up to 500 millivolts. there we go and see it back and forth. back and forth.

Back and forth. you know, so both of them. you can still do that. But there's no huge advantage on an analog meter like this.

but maybe this one's just a bit slow. Let's try the triplet. Okay, there we go. 500 millivolts 1 Hertz Let's change that to 5 Hertz And there we go.

This one's a bit quicker. You can see the wiggle in that meter movement there. No worries, let's take that up to 10. It's can't really see it, but you can see something's happening there on the digital but not all digital Zai created equal.

Let's have a look at this keysight. uu 1272 I This thing's hopeless. Not only does the bar graph not show anything, but the digits are almost unreadable. What is the what is that value? I Don't know, you tell me.

So that's actually a case of the update. Fast update rate of this meter which I believe is are seven times per second actually being too much of a problem there. This you 1282 A is doing better. Nice stable reading there.

It just doesn't You know it just averages that out. No problems whatsoever, but you can clearly see that there's excursion there on the bar graph. nice. and your classic fluke 87 5 Well, that's doing the business too.

So as you can see, that's quite superior. I Mean where we're seeing 10 Hertz updates there? No worries whatsoever, and you're never gonna see that on the analog. So clearly the much acclaimed feature of the analog meet up. maybe and some circumstances as good but modern digital with their you know bar graph.

update at fast I'm sampling a bar graph. update I Just going to beat it I Mean let's let's say if we go to 20 Hertz Can it still see that? Yep. Can still see that. You can see that we're going back and forth.

You can see that there's something on your signal, you just can't see it on the analog meter. And there we go. if you're talking now. 5 Hertz with a 1 volt RMS signal.

Look, you can actually see the excursions there, but you know, Granted, it's kind of a bit harder to like read the scale of a digital bar graph compared to the analog here, but it takes time for the analog. I Mean it's you're not seeing the full excursion there. It's only if I like went down to one Hertz Maybe you'll Maybe you'll start to see that there we go, that's better. but like the digital meter is just better responding.

Once again, no contest if we go back to the Simpson here. Yeah, as you can see the excursions quite large, they're at our 10 Hertz with the 1 volt RMS 5 Hertz But Dave Didn't you know that one of the advantages of analog meters you can like measure caps. You can see it like shoot up and then give me indication the capacitance value when it goes back? Well, yeah, okay, good. Anya I've got a capacitance mode.

much easier, more accurate I Don't have to calculate anything based on a decay factor of a meter. Needle movement might have been great back in the 60s. Maybe like you didn't have to get your like LCI bridge you out or something, but no thanks. And as far as input protection goes, well, cat ratings weren't around there.

When these things are exist that you can still buy this one. I Don't know if they I can't raid it these days. I'll have to have a look at some new images. This is an old model but but basically they'll have almost even you cheap ones.

You know your bottom range ones have diode protection, back-to-back diode protection directly across the meter movement like that so it is pretty hard to destroy. Well destroy them by simple overloads, but surges and everything else and they aren't going to be as robust as your newfangled I cat rated digital meters and a lot of analog meters will have a direct like 50 micro mode because this is a 50 micro amp full scale so it this basically connects directly to the meter movement like that and they will be like fuse protected and things like that like on say 5 amp range and stuff like that all the other our regular current ranges. but anyway, yeah you don't want to be using this on like big mains stuff or anything like that. can't really come a gutter.

So yeah it's not uncommon to our blow your the meter movement in your blow your diet protection or whatever. or you blow out your resistors or whatever in your analog meter. They don't have a newfangled you know moves and PTC's and stuff like that. but quite a few analog meters will have a good old-fashioned mechanical overload.

like a thermal overload in there. nice so you just reset it. Whoops. Filter that wrong reset.

One thing I do like about analog meters that have these anymore, it's an output function and totally contrary to its labeling our but it's actually an input and what it does is it's basically the same as your regular Ac/dc input range. but it's AC coupled so it's basically just a capacitor in series. If you have a look at the tear downs I've done of these on the video at the end of this, you'll see that basically it's just a big capacitor in series and it removes any DC And if you're wondering about these newfangled fit analog meters or FET bottoms volt o meter as they're called, this one's even got a fancy pantsy Joule fit, look at that. Basically, you've got all the same limitations of a regular analog meter.

or you scale your Ohms as backwards. with the nonlinear scale and all your accuracy problems and your zero in problems, you're still got the Zero on there. Everything else is exactly the same, except the only thing it solves is the input impedance on DC volts only. Well on this particular model.

Anyway, the 22 to 20 micron Terr slash RadioShack slashed handy for those playing along at home. 10 Meg Ohms affixed 10 Meg Ohms on basically every DC volt range. so that's basically the only advantage whatsoever to a FET analog Vom. Everything else is basically the same.

and on this particular one, as I said, you don't even get that on the AC voltage. It's back to the old good old 10k Ohms per volt and DC amps. this one actually 316 millivolts. This one actually tells you the burden, voltage, or maximum burn voltage? Nice.

Well there you go. I think I spent like 25 minutes or something talking about the differences between analog and digital multimeters. and if there's really any advantage to these analogs these days. and I've got to say well, sorry, but like no, there isn't even for the you know, the much celebrated factor of their meter: the needle movement.

You can see like little transitions and stuff like that. and I could you could do other tests? Maybe there'd be some modes and circumstances where the analog might still be a bit superior to a modern digital, but with the modern, fast updating bar graphs I Think Fluke Were the first to do a fast update responding bar graph they weren't exactly designed for that purpose is to replicate or and beat the functionality of your analog meter movement so you know these are more accurate. they're cheaper, they've got vastly better resolution, and they've got especially on Ohms, which analog meters are hopeless for the usability. It beats it hands down in practically every area.

So as much as I like analog meters sorry, there's a reason why they've pretty much gone the way of the dodo. All I can think of one advantage which will always be there. Pretty much work with me here is that these meters do not need batteries. If you're measuring voltage and current, they're powered from the circuit under test.

So if you're stranded on a deserted island, you need a multimeter to measure your voltage and current and you need it to work. You'd want to be taking an analog meter because you don't need those pesky batteries. But of course, you do need batteries for the Ohms our scale because you've got to power the resistance under test to power the meter movement. But that's the only thing you need batteries for.

But apart from that, you can take the batteries out of these and they still measure perfectly fine. And of course, there's nothing Eletronic wrong to go with them. It's just a bunch of resistors and diodes inside these and I'll link it at the end of the video. Somewhere here.

a teardown of our three classic analog multimeters. But yeah, maybe if you had ok, you've got a solar powered, rechargeable, wanky multimeter or something like that. Maybe you could. It might win out on your deserted island.

But no, come on. sorry. Anyway, if you enjoyed that video, please give it a big thumbs up. And as always, if you think I'm wrong, tell me down below.

go for it. But I Still love the analog meters. They're great. Nostalgia: I Still love my first and love me tours are gone.

Ah yes, I'm using my poor first analog multimeter to prop up the digital. That's a lack of respect. Unbelievable. This thing still works all these decades later.

Catch you next time.