Please keep in mind this is my very first electronics project so it’s entirely possible I’m doing something wrong. Here’s the deal: I’m building a contact microphone from a kit that came with four 150R resistors and four 3.3M resistors. My digital multimeter shows a correct reading for the 150R resistors but does not react at all when I test the 3.3M resistors. To cover my bases: I have the red lead plugged into VΩ and the black lead plugged into "COM". I have the dial set to "200" when measuring the 150R resistors and set to "2M" when measuring the 3.3M resistors. I have touched the leads together before each reading.
When I touch the leads together at 2M the display changes from "1" to ".000". But when I touch the leads to the resistors, the display simple reads "1".
Any help is much appreciated!
Best Answer
Assuming you don't have a 20M range, put two of the identically marked 3.3M resistor in parallel on the 2M range, and you should read about 1.65M.
The "1" with the rest of the display blank means that the resistance is too high for that range. For example, if you try to measure a 330\$\Omega\$ resistor on the 200 ohm range you'll see the same thing (with the decimal point in a different position).
Avoid touching the leads (or touch no more than one of the connections to the multimeter leads) lest you affect the reading.