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Measuring a humbucker's DC resistance "gone wrong" !!!!! (a question)

G

guitar_199

New member
Joined
Jan 16, 2012
Messages
10
First off, I need to say that the two guitars involved.... work fine! I was just curious about the DC resistance of the pickups involved. Now... on to the issue.....

Has anyone ever seen a digital multimeter.... that just WOULD NOT WORK for measuring a pickup????

I grabbed my multimeter, a 2 ft cut off guitar cable end, and alligator clip leads that came with the meter. I hooked everything up,
maxed out both volume pots and turned on the meter. Much of the time the meter just reads OL.
However, just sitting there watching it..... it will pop up a reading of around 30 K or so.... then skip down to around 16k.... then skip it's way down
to around 3K...... like it is HUNTING for something. Then it will go back to OL again.

If I unhook it from the guitar and clip it to a couple of test resistors... it reads them perfectly.

It just does this weird behavior when I hook it up to the guitar.

And again... the guitar works fine.

Are there some meters that are just "wonkey" and won't do this?
 
P

poor man's burst

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2010
Messages
533
Try with another multimeter. If it does the same, the problem is with the guitar, not the multimeter.
 
G

guitar_199

New member
Joined
Jan 16, 2012
Messages
10
poor man's burst said:
Try with another multimeter. If it does the same, the problem is with the guitar, not the multimeter.
Click to expand...
Good call. I knew I had another one and had to dig it up. THIS ONE.... displayed EXACTLY what I was expecting... and was very stable.

That first meter... it is just the weirdest thing I have ever seen. But... all is good now.

IN ADDITION!!!!!!!

About three weeks ago I was putting a new set of Planet Tone 'DG' pickups into a Strat copy I have.... and declared the bridge pickup to be bad from the factory. (Long story short, I bought them two years ago and JUST NOW got around to putting them in... so there IS NO WARRANTY available! My delay!!!!)

The good news is.... I was using the same whacky meter and it was not reading the pickup... it just showed OPEN.
I just took this new meter and measured that bridge pickup up... and it reads RIGHT ON SPEC!!!!!!!

What a great day!

Thanks for the advice (that...frankly... I should have thought of myself!!!)!!!!!!
 
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