Vent: The old timer who told me to ditch my multimeter was half right

Back in 2016, this veteran tech named Dave at a shop in Cleveland told me to stop using my autoranging multimeter for power supply checks and just eyeball the swollen caps. I thought he was nuts, but after a few weeks I realized he meant for the obvious failures, not everything. Last month I had a board with no visible damage and I trusted my meter first, which saved me 2 hours of guessing. So the advice was good for quick triage, but ignoring basic tools altogether would have cost me a job. Anyone else get handed a rule of thumb that only works in certain situations?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_roberts6d ago

Had a similar thing with an old guy who swore by checking the fuse first before anything else. That rule saved me plenty on simple stuff, but it bit me once on a board where the fuse was fine and the real issue was a cracked trace hiding under a connector. Meter found it in five minutes after I stopped following his shortcut. Rules like that are good for the obvious stuff, but they break the second you get something weird. Now I treat them like a quick look before I pull out my tools, not a replacement for them.

thompson.reese6d ago

Wait, did you ever find out if that cracked trace was something specific to that board or just bad luck? I had a similar deal where I kept checking the same relay on a dryer until I realized the thermal cutoff was the real culprit, and now I always do a quick resistance test on everything before I trust the obvious fix.