Bought a $90 cable toner for a job in a crawlspace and it was worth every penny

I was tracing a line under an old house in Tucson, and my old tone generator just couldn't cut through the noise. The new one I grabbed had a stronger signal and a better probe, so I found the break in about ten minutes instead of guessing for an hour. What's the one tool you've bought that saved you from a nightmare job?

4 comments

4 Comments

juliarodriguez3mo ago

Actually, a toner just finds the wire, it doesn't find a break. You need a time-domain reflectometer for that, which is a whole other tool. Still, having the right gear makes any job way less of a headache.

the_sam2mo ago

Man you are SO right about the right gear. Is there anything worse than trying to fix something with the wrong tool? I wasted a whole weekend once trying to trace a bad cable with just a multimeter before I finally caved and got the proper tester. The moment it pinpointed the break was pure magic. It really does turn a nightmare job into something you can actually finish.

drew_jones313mo ago

Grabbed a good inspection camera once and found a lost screw in a wall instantly.

willowg883mo ago

Totally get that! Was it one of those cheap flexible ones or a more rigid model with a better screen? I've been looking at them for some car work and the picture quality seems to vary a ton. Finding a tiny screw like that is the dream scenario for sure.