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I dropped $80 on a fancy cable toner that ended up being useless for most of my jobs
Everyone kept saying a high-end toner was a game changer, so I bought one. It worked great in the shop on a clean line, but the second I took it to an apartment building with old wiring, it was a total fail. The signal bled everywhere, and I couldn't trace a single line through the walls. I spent more time messing with the settings than I would have just doing a continuity check with my meter. That was $80 down the drain for a tool that sits in my bag. I feel like these things are only good for perfect, new construction sites. For the rest of us in older neighborhoods, they're a waste. Has anyone found a toner that actually works in those messy, crowded wall cavities?
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the_angela7mo ago
Forget the toner, you need to check the building's grounding. Old apartment wiring often has a shared or faulty ground that turns the whole wall into an antenna for your toner signal. That bleed you described is a classic sign. I wasted a whole afternoon once before an old timer told me to test the outlet ground with my meter first. If it's bad, no fancy toner on earth will work right in that mess.
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the_jake7mo ago
A whole afternoon? That's brutal. I would have lost my mind after the first hour of chasing phantom signals in the walls. It's crazy how a bad ground can make a simple job feel impossible.
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