What's a "good" LCR meter?

[jcarmody]

I currently use a Tegam 252 to measure conductance and capacitance, but it doesn't have a communication output (and it's not really supported by the manufacturer, or it's custom for our company, or something else undesirable).  The PXIe-4082 is about the same price ($3K), and I'm willing to buy one to play with test, but I'm interested in a lower-cost option as I'll need at least five if they work out.  Any ideas?

The testing has to do with, as it's been explained to me, the fact that different LCR meters use different methods to measure LCR circuits.  I'm told that, although any NIST-traceable, calibrated LCR meter will measure L, C and R independently just fine, the Tegam 252 is the only one that does a combined measurement "correctly" (for us).  Yes, I heard what I just said. 😛  Different meters give different results, and they're all correct.  I'm too embarrassed to repeat more of what I've heard.  Suffice it to say that the Tegam 252 is specified in our Acceptance Test Procedure and cannot be substituted (at least until I can demonstrate that another device can provide the same results.)

Thank you.

[Henrik_Volkers]

Seems to measure at 1kHz only. Hook up known elements (resistors) and add a scope to see if they measure with 1kHz sine or rec or ??  and what currents are actually used.

Q&D check: A 2 ch buffer amplifier, some ( at least one) reference resistors, the sound card  and a LV diagram 🙂 (if you swap channels and calc the geometric mean only the nonlinearities of the card and the uncertainty of your reference resistor matters)

To get traceable measurements a soundcard will be a challenging discussion with the auditor 😄