Vent: Bought a $40 cable toner that just made things worse

Had a job in a big old apartment building with a rat's nest of lines in the basement. My old toner died, so I grabbed a cheap one from the supply house thinking it would get me through. Thing kept giving false positives on dead lines and wouldn't trace through a patch panel at all. Wasted over an hour before I just ran a new line from scratch. Anyone have a toner they actually trust for messy multi-dwelling units?

4 comments

4 Comments

betty_wells3mo agoMost Upvoted

What's the deal with those cheap toners anyway? Buddy of mine had the same thing happen in an office building rewire. His new budget toner lit up every conduit in the drop ceiling like a Christmas tree. He ended up tracing the wrong line twice and cutting live service. Total mess. He swears by his old Fluke now, says he'll never cheap out on a toner again. Sounds like you learned that lesson the hard way too.

knight.dylan3mo agoMost Upvoted

Honestly that "lit up every conduit" story sounds like user error to me. Sometimes a cheap toner is just fine for a simple job if you know how to use it right. Not every situation needs a two hundred dollar Fluke. I've seen guys with expensive gear mess up because they got lazy with the basics. Maybe your buddy's problem was the building's wiring, not the tool.

miller.rowan28d ago

That "lit up every conduit" story has a few too many variables to blame the tool entirely. A cheap toner will bleed signal if you clip onto a jack that's daisy-chained or if the pair is sharing a ground with other circuits, but a decent tech accounts for that before cutting. Your friend might have been working too fast and missed obvious signs like a mismatched pair or a shared termination point. Sometimes it's easier to blame the equipment than admit you skipped the step of checking continuity first.

allen.kai3mo ago

Yeah, @betty_wells, you only buy that mistake once.