Thanks for your comment, I'm older than you :} and I grew up with analog meters myself ! In fact one of the meters I used was an old analog Radio Shack from the 90s.
But look at this guy on YouTube using a "Horrible Freight" orange meter doing the exact same thing I was doing and he is pulling 29-30 volts on a ripple measurement (almost the same amount as mine) and he is casually saying "you don't want to see much more than that.." instead of being alarmed:
So if you use that type of common meter you are going to get those kinds of values. Believe me the answer is in the internal algorithm that assumes a sine wave of < 450 Hz, instead of the rectified half-wave pattern that comes out of the diode bridge at probably much higher frequency. I'm just pissed-off that I didn't think before bothering you all with my question. (In another life I was a mathematical physicist and I should have used my now depleted brain).
In fact another guy on Youtube makes a comment about that problem exactly saying that a "spurious voltage measurement" comes out of some cheap meters (about 1 min into the video):
Thank you very much for rushing to my help though.
