I'm not insisting on all the features, but since I'm willing to spend some $$$, I minimally want to see what's out there. I've had all these features in 3 multimeters, but I'm after one that has as many of these functions as possible. I had one that died a decade or so ago, which suggests my need hasn't been desperate, that had the counter, albeit only to about 20 kHz, and a "standard" bjt socket, though it didn't take TO-3's, and the continuity tester with low voltage at the probes, but it was only 3-1/2 digits. Another one lacked the counter, yet provided the LRC meter function, among others. Since my focus, as much as anything, will, henceforth, be on fixing old stuff that's broken, the old through-hole transistors are probably what I'll be seeing. I still poke around in boxes that have T)-5's and TO-92's, among others. I've always found the digital LRC, or just R meter useful, being severely "chromatically challenged." Generally, all I can tell about the stripes is whether they're there or not.

I find it really hard to read anything on an 0201 passive. In fact, I find it really hard to find one once I've dropped it on the work surface. I have to do that by "feel".

I don't mind paying for the functions I need, but I'm not interested in buying an instrument that's compromised away some of the other functions in order to include a simple 'scope.

BTW, I have a milliohm meter, a Fluke 8012A, that measures down to 2 m-ohms with two wires, though it has to be told to do that, i.e. just plugging in the probes in different sockets doesn't do the job by itself. That's the first digital multimeter I ever got, and it still work just fine. Oddly enough, more modern ones seem to have a built-in timer that tells 'em when to die.

RE