A Poor Man's Mag Tester

by Tom Carnegie

You've probably heard someone say something to the effect "my mag puts out 'x' number of volts". You probably also know that this doesn't mean too much. At what speed does the mag put out 'x' volts? Does the number of volts really even matter? Another popular mag test is to attach some load (such as a small lightbulb) to the mag and then somehow judge its condition, maybe by observing how brightly the bulb glows or maybe by how many volts the mag is putting out. Again, the measurements are useless at worst and subjective at best. There are better ways to test the efficacy of a mag. One of these is with a mag tester such as the one described in Dykes manual. (see next page) This is a very handy instrument if you can come up with one. If you can't, there are ways to obtain similar meaningful results.

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