On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:15:29 -0400, "Eike Lantzsch, ZP6CGE"
wrote:

I prefer a Fluke anyway. This is why:
[snip]

They are good.

For what it is worth, I bought a big Fluke 5 1/2 digit 8520A ten or
more years back used. It is still going strong. I hardly ever use some
of its fancy features, but I do use 4-wire resistance sometimes. It is
hardly portable (rack mount size) but great on the bench.

Here's a story about its resistance to abuse:

At some flea market I once acquired some strange glass encapsulated
resistors. They were at least an inch long and very high resistance
(100Mohm or more as I recall). It occured to me I could use one or two
to make a nice HV probe. So I built a divider inside a plastic tube. I
found a HV dc/dc supply in my junk that I think was in the 1-2 kv
range. I turned it on, and tried measuring with my new probe plugged
into my Fluke. The plastic tube was clear, and to by horror, when I
touched the probe on the HV the glass resistor lit up. (I'm guessing
they were gas filled to do this on purpose, but I really have no clue
why it happened -- the voltage should not have jumped the gap in air.)

So as I see this happening in the probe, I hear the Fluke make strange
unpleasant clicking noises. I look over at my favorite meter and the
display is now in Klingon. With great sadness I power cycle the meter
and to my amazement the meter looks fine. I have never seen any
indication that anything was permanently injured. Try that with a
cheapo meter.

Not that I have anything against the cheap ones -- I have several.