I bought the R, L, & C decade boxes from this seller. The Capacitance box works great and exactly how I expected it to, but the design of the Resistance & Inductance boxes is very different and requires reading the datasheet to understand how they are supposed to work.

I'm writing this review because I want folks to know that if they like the Capacitance box, they should not expect the same usability from the companion R or L boxes.

First, the C box has higher values on top with lower values on the bottom. This is the reverse for the R & L boxes (not sure why that would be).

Second, with the C box, you can set all switches to OFF, then just flip the switch corresponding to the capacitance value you want (as one might expect). However the R & L boxes require that switch 10 be ON for any decade that is not being used and OFF if you want to use a value from that row. This is not documented on the board, you have to look at the datasheet to understand how to select the value you want.

So in summary, the C box is great and I only wish that the R & L boxes followed the same design considerations to bring consistency to the product family.

When I bought this device back in April 2023, there was no datasheet provided. When I first tried to use the device I was seeing no resistance (open circuit) when I tried to engage any of the switches. I contacted the seller and he then provided a datasheet with a schematic that shows that you must engage at least 1 switch on each row in order to complete the circuit and read a resistance across the terminals. If you don't want to use a resistance value from a particular row, then you need to engage switch 10 on that row as a 0Ω resistor. This is unusual and not like any other resistance decade box I've used before. I would never have figured out this little switch requirement on my own and I'm not sure how the designer expected folks to know this without a schematic, datasheet, or instructions.

Another issue I discovered is that there is a constant 2Ω resistance between the terminals. This is probably due to the fact that the signal has to travel through each of the 7 DIP switches when it's set to 0Ω (see above). This becomes a problem when trying to use the lowest resistance values. If you engage the 1Ω switch, you will get 3Ω. If you engage the 2Ω switch, you'll get 3-4Ω. The 6Ω switch gave me 12Ω. The device is simply not precise within the 1% tolerance that is advertised. The resistors are 1%, but the device is not due to the design choices that were made.

I also purchased the Inductor decade box and it had similar issues.

I asked the seller for a refund since the device did not behave as I had expected, but I was declined for being outside of the 30 day return window. I should have tested the device when I received it, but this is such a dead simple function that I didn't foresee the types of problems I would have. I'm leaving this review to inform the next customer as to what they can expect.