How to use a Tone Generator (Klein VDV500-123)

Comments · 76

• VI

  @victorcoletta5777 · 5 years ago

  Would have been great if you demonstrated on an actual cluster of wires instead of a big piece of steel

  64

• CH

  @CheekyFella1791 · 6 years ago (edited)

  Connect the black clip to a good ground like a ground bus or ground on an outlet and it will make that toner SCREAM! You will definitely find your cable that way.

  19

• MI

  @michaelwright1602 · 5 years ago

  I bought one of these to sniff out the wiring in my house. I was able to find two buried junction boxes in my garage ceiling and wiring running behind a wall. It saved me from tearing out that wall and those two junction boxes had overheated in the past, with some good scorching going on in the boxes. Also helped with the HVAC wiring, an installer hacked it up, this sniffer allowed me to make sure that wiring was still useable vs running new wiring through the wall and ceiling. The tone is just fine, it easily sniffed out multiple wiring in several walls which saved me a lot of work and time. I'm keeping mine, and I don't work for Klein.

  9

• RO

  @RobertoGarcia-ql5ch · 2 years ago

  excelent

• VI

  @vitocotto6279 · 3 years ago

  Just brought today, video was helpful.............

• JO

  @JohnnyBoyHere2024 · 2 years ago

  You have informative video and I like it. I would suggest a less expensive tone generator (live or non live circuit). It can be done by using multimeter.

• BR

  @brianreinhardt4050 · 3 years ago

  Who knew Klein made a rebar finding tool...

  1

• RI

  @richardmcgrail4692 · 4 years ago

  Can it find underground residential wiring (e.g. for landscaping lights)?

  4

• GO

  @Golobtin · 6 years ago (edited)

  1- Another trick which is somehow based on the same concept you alluded to (touching the conductor by your finger), is that if you connect both alligator clips to a pair of wires on one end and send the signal down the wires that way, and if &nbsp;at the other end of wire you encounter a plethora of wires which you might find confusing to identify, &nbsp;the trick would be to keep the probe amoung those wires so that you hear the probe sound, then try to short ends of each pair together. Once the pair which carry the signal get shorted, probe sound would stop.<br>2- I suppose the finger-touching trick you mentioned, is based on the concept that a bunch of wires close to each other can influence each other and due to the sensitivity of the probe, influenced-wires would cause probe&apos;s sound as well. By distancing the probe from the wire, in effect you are reducing the sensitivity of probe applied to the end of the wire, then by touching the wire by your finger, you are giving another path to the signal in wire to pass through (sort of grounding), hence weaker sound form the probe. I suppose if you wet you finger and stand bare footed on concrete, when you touch the wire with your finger, perhaps probe&apos;s sound stops (in fact your are grounding the signal in wire via your body). I don&apos;t have one of these, therefore I &nbsp;cannot test the above theory. I suppose if they make probes with sensitivity adjustment capabilities, we would not need to touch the wire by hand anymore. In such cases, when pretty much each wire is activating the probe, all we need to do would be to reduce the sensitivity of the probe and then bring the probe very close to wires. Signal-carrying-wire would activate the sound in probe, but other wire&apos;s signal would fall below the threshold of the sensitivity of the probe and would not cause any sound......Do you think this makes sense? .... BTW, thanks for your wonderful video ...

  8

• HU

  @hundedbarz718 · 3 years ago

  It tells you it&apos;s the tone when you touch it because it&apos;s using you for an antenna

• LT

  @ltygress · 3 years ago

  I have two outlets in my house that aren&apos;t working - both on the kitchen counter. One was a GFCI and I found out it had a loose connection and was creating an arc and burning the wire. The damage was very minor, but I replaced the whole thing anyway. However, the actual power lines before AND after replacing it, were dead (with the circuit breaker on, of course).<br><br>The entire house is daisy-chained and several of the GFCI outlets are connected. One goes out, and you have to find out which one popped so you can reset it. But I didn&apos;t find any of them that were popped. (I say popped, because the reset button &quot;pops&quot; out when the circuit triggers a break.) So now I have no idea what to think. I&apos;ve tested a few other outlets in the house, and they work fine. The problem is either between two outlets, or it is another connected outlet with loose wires that are no longer providing electricity to the two dead ones. But I have NO CLUE where this line leads to next! It&apos;s not the next outlet along the kitchen counter because that outlet appears to be a &quot;dead end&quot; that doesn&apos;t lead to another. Same with the second outlet that doesn&apos;t work - it seems to be the end of the line for that circuit too.<br><br>So will a tone generator help me find which outlet this dead one is connected to? I was thinking about clipping the alligator clip on to the &quot;live&quot; wire at this outlet while the circuit was actually turned off at the breaker box. Then I was going to use the probe near the various outlets of the house to find where it leads. But it seems all tone generators are meant for just RJ11 and RJ45 lines. Will they (all) still work on electrical wires too? I don&apos;t need to follow the wires all the way through the wall, I just need to find the next outlet it connects to!

  2

• II

  @Iisidjenejiirjrkgawdcv9888yyyt · 3 years ago

  Great job!! Very much appreciated 😊

  1