Bought a cheap cable toner from a truck sale and it cost me a full day

It was a 'Sure-Tone' model, looked fine, but the signal bled across every pair in a 50-pair bundle. Spent eight hours chasing ghosts in a new office building before I gave up and used my old one. That was $40 and a day's pay down the drain. Anyone have a toner they actually trust for big cable runs?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_carr2mo ago

Ever feel like your tools are actively working against you? I swear my cheap toner once made a whole rack hum!

lisa_hill235d ago

My toner from last year actually did the same thing to a 24-port switch I had. I was convinced it was just making everything worse, blaming the cheap stuff. Then after I swapped it out, the hum came back a week later with a different tool. That’s when I realized the toner was just showing me a loose ground screw that had been there the whole time. It completely changed how I see cheap gear now, honestly.

bethwhite2mo ago

Couldn't it be the rack was already having issues? Sometimes a tool just finds a problem, @evan_carr. That hum might have been a helpful warning you got for cheap.