Transitor Tester/LCR Meter recommendations?

[nzCdog]

Been checking out these on ebay... lots of options available!  Does anyone have any recommendations?
I guess I'd like something with reasonable accuracy 2-5%ish that's easy to use... and cheeep.  Just in case someone has taken the plunge and had an opinion on one of the cheaper ones out there

I mainly want to test reclaimed parts, roll some inductors (counting the turns but it's nice to test also) and test transistors & FETs etc.  ESR is also interesting to me but prolly not important.

[EBRAddict]

There isn't much in between the $7-$18US Chinese cheapies on eBay and the testers from Peak (Atlas DCA, LCR, etc.) For my projects the cheapies weren't cutting it and I went with some of the Peak testers--they aren't perfect but enough to do the job. The next step up is real lab equipment and that's getting into a lot of money.

At one point I was going to build my own transistor tester because the biasing points used by the Peak Atlas DCA weren't really in line with the guitar pedals', and the eBay stuff is undefined, but I haven't gotten to it.

[nzCdog]

Thanks for the reply. 
I was aware of those Peak testers, but they're pretty pricey here... not really worth it to me for the odd job I'll be doing.  Like you, I have thought about building something, but I really don't have time... especially when they're so cheap to buy.   I'll post the model I end up getting here, thanks again

[flanagan0718]

A lot of people use the peak meter. I was using my DMM until recently. I can't trust it anymore tho. I'd be interested in what you find.


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[bsoncini]

I borrowed a  friend's peak. I think it was the dca55. I tested a bunch of componentss with it and my cheapo Chinese tester. I think it is a gm 328 and the values were always pretty close. Not good enough for NASA but for pedals....

Another question would be how accurate the peak is. But really. We're not making sure missiles function properly, we're manipulating low voltage signals.

[reddesert]

I have one of those $10 GM 328 things. It works. It seems reasonably accurate for resistance and capacitance and gives sensible values for transistor gains and diode forward voltages. It identifies transistor and diode pinouts correctly.

For JFETs, it measures something related to gate voltage and drain current, but not sure exactly what, and the numbers are not very precise (only to 0.1 V or 0.1 mA). They are not the same as the V_gs and I_dss I got from the very simple runoffgroove FET measurement circuit on the Fetzer Valve webpage, which uses an ordinary DVM and can measure to 0.01 V or mA. The GM 328 may not be precise enough to match FETs for a phaser.

It auto-senses what the part is, which is clever, but there's no way to override it. So for example I wanted to measure inductance of a guitar pickup, but it measured the resistance instead. For a smaller coil with less resistance, maybe it would measure the inductance.

For the price, it's still very impressive. I mean, you used to pay half of that just to buy a ZIF socket and a battery snap.

[matmosphere]

I ordered a cheap one from tayda. Seems reasonably accurate/ the readings I get are within tolerance for passive and within spec for transistors. I'm sure the readings aren't dead on, but I'm not shooting anybody into space or anything.

[culturejam]

I have one of these: http://amzn.to/2uaZbeZ

It's pretty accurate on gain/leakage, as I did compare it to my DCA55 while I still had it. And it does LCR as well (not just transistors / diodes). Measures ESR as well, which is nice.

Most of the $15 - $30 ones with the LCDs will do all these things, and mostly they use the same code base.

[nzCdog]

Thanks for the suggestions! 
I think I'd definitely want one that can manually change modes...  it's nice to hear that they are use-able for what they are (and cost)