EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Test Equipment Looking for a good multi-meter

In my student days I had a Saturday job at Maplins in Bristol. People used to ask why they should spend £125 on a Fluke 77 when they could buy a copy for £35. In answer I used to throw our demo 77 against the nearest wall then pick it up and test a battery or such like. It never failed to produce a sale and I never had to try it with the £35 model!
A model 77/79 or the modern equivalent has always served me well, none of the fancy temperature or transistor testing stuff, hfe and the like but a good fused current range, clear display and most of all a good quality set of probes.
As Geoff correctly says, a good analogue meter is a must for those slow variations that you just can see with a DMM and my favourite is the AVO8, built like the preverbial outhouse and a 20K ohms per volt meter so nice and sensitive without affecting what you are trying to measure.
Ebay would be my choice for good used units in both camps and get the DMM calibrated and use it to check the AVO.
Regards
Ed