PTE™ Wire Tracer & Circuit Tester -Tone Generator & Probe Kit - Find & Trace Wires & Cables, Test Circuit Continuity, Network Telephone Line, Coaxial, Automotive - Features Alligator Clips & RJ11 Plug

This tools was paramount in helping me replace the instrument Custer on an older tractor. The wires running under the hood were all the same color so I needed to trace each wire to its origin so that I could determine what it should connect to. A few months back I started doing it by hand. An hour and multiple gashes later, I thought that there must be a better way. I had heard of these type tools before and even before reading the reviews, I was skeptical. After a bunch of research on which device to buy, It came down to this one or a much more expensive professional unit. Since I don’t plan to use this tool very often so the less expensive unit was the more reasonable option for me. I could buy 10 of these for less than half the price of a pro unit. Anyways, I settled on this Wire Tracer device and boy was it ever a life saver! Instructions are pretty darn straight forward, the most difficult part was finding the two 9v batteries required. (So don’t forget batteries if you don’t have them) I simply connect the sending unit onto the wire lead I wish to trace back and then run the receiving unit along the wires until I hear a beep. This made it easy to determine which wire went to the fuel gauge, which went to the thermostat, etc. This time around, with the assistance of this tool, I was done in an hour! Well worth the price for me! Build quality is exactly what you’d expect for this price point but, so long as you don’t toss it into the bottom of your tool bag, they should last at least a few years of medium usage. If you’re planning to use these daily, I would suggest looking into the more professional units as I don’t think these would hold up to rigors of daily use. I can also see this being very useful for finding breaks in an invisible fence.

The circuit tracer arrived two business days after the order was placed. The tracer was of adequate quality to work well. I have used other tracers to find phone circuits as a technician in the past. I was not built to hold up under rough use but it's cost is a fraction of what an industrial grade tracer costs. The transmitter emits a distinctive warble that is easy to find with the tracer. The volume is adjustable so you can prevent crosstalk into adjacent circuits. I have used the tracer twice since it arrived. The first on a telephone wire that had stopped working. I was able to find a bad connection in a phone jack two rooms away from where the wire entered the house. Now I can use a phone with a touch pad that I don't have to pull the phone away from my ear to use. The second was on an electrical wire. The circuit once fed a pump that has been removed during a renovation. After de-energizing the circuit, I was able to trace the wire from the electrical panel into the attic and find the end of the wire. The circuit will be re-purposed without having to purchase a new breaker and wire. This is an inexpensive tracer that does the job. I recommend it.

It worked, Was going to start tearing out walls and tracing to find the short. After search I found this Wife and kids pleaded with me to get it. I had never heard of one before and had no idea how to use it. But watched some videos and found it was not hard to use to trace wires. Found a smoke alarm that was replaced and the old electric hookup was not removed breaking the circuit.by grounding it out.I did get a few false starts following the wire in the wrong direction before I found the right direction. running where I would have never dreamed it would run. I would have had to tear out and replace two walls and all of the ceiling if I tried to trace it that way. So At the price, it was a good investment.

I was not sure if this tracer would help me find the cause of two dead outlets but it did. The outlets were in a kitchen island done in stone. One of those outlet testers with the lights indicated I had an open hot line. Previously I tried for hours turning on and off breakers and CGFI outlets in hopes of restoring power. I was the second owner of the house and searched for a hidden switch. With this tracker, I put the signal generator on the wires per the instructions and started walking around the stone island. It gave me a good strong signal to a down stream outlet (also not working). I also could trace a signal down to the floor where I am guessing the wires went into the cement. I went to my breaker box but did not see any signal. When I walked around the house the signal went off near an outlet that had power on a kitchen wall. When I inspected that outlet, the hot line coming from the island was attached to the outlet, but pinched by the insulation. I stripped back the insulation and that restored power to the island. I would recommend this tool.

DOES NOT COME WITH TWO REQUIRED 9-VOLT BATTERIES. The speaker on the wand is not loud enough for active construction sites, but it is a surprisingly high quality speaker compared to other test and toners. The toner and continuity tester work perfectly. I think this would be good for personal use, or in places without tons of background noise. Update 3/23/15 - The wand has developed an irritating squawking drone when it is turned up to full volume. Adjusting the nubby at the end of the wand does nothing to fix it, so it seems it is a permanent fault in the wand. Just one click down from max volume is enough to tune down these sounds, but as I mentioned, it is a rather quiet speaker. Again, this is not a heavy duty test and toner set, and I admit this shortcoming is probably stemming from how rough I've treated it over the past month.

I had run tons of wiring through an for an outdoor deck we planned on building over 15 years ago (ah, the best laid plans...) Now that we are thinking of moving and selling our house I was panicking over the 10+ wires that were out there and needed a way to remind myself WTH I had envisioned a decade and a half ago. I figured a tracer would help me greatly in that endeavor. Looking at the tons of tracers available I continually found myself coming back to the Klein products. But, I also kept thinking, "It's a tracer that I need for this one task right now and maybe in the next 15 years I might need it again, so, do I really need to buy something so expensive?" Though I almost didn't buy this tracer because by comparison it was so much cheaper. But, I pulled the trigger anyway (figuring if it doesn't work I can always return it) and am so glad I did. It did everything I hoped it would do and in under half an hour I had identified every single one of the wires I had out there (except for one, and that isn't the fault of the tracer, it is my fault for not keeping a single stupid piece of paper identifying everything in the first place... The wire isn't live, not even the tiniest sound is produced by the tracer no matter how many switches and circuit breakers I turn on or off so that one will remain a mystery). If you are looking for a great tracer/circuit tester at a great price, this one is highly recommended!

This tool does what it advertised. You can track a wire in the wall all the way to its destination. The problem is that it does it to well as soon as you get near a toned wire, it beeps. It is hard to tell exactly where the wire is in the wall because it beeps anywhere near the wire, and it gets louder as it is supposed to the closer you get. However, that is inches away from the wire, and if you want to cut in a new box, knowing exactly where the wire is difficult at best to find. It would be better if they added a set of lights on it the closer to the wire you get similar to a stud finder light that goes up the bar when you hit a stud edge.

I bought this after having the typical problem with a front porch outlet: it had Christmas lights plugged into it, there was some rain, and the lights stopped working. It wasn't a tripped breaker, so clearly there was a GFCI outlet in the path somewhere that I had to find. I noticed the garage outlet and the lamppost were on the same circuit, because they also stopped working. I tried manually searching the house for GFCI's. I found lots of them, but none of them were tripped. I was certain I had checked every inch of the house. Bought one of these out of pride - I'm not calling an electrician to watch them embarrass me solving a simple problem. So, I turned off the breaker to the outside outlets, garage, etc. Pulled out the front porch outlet and connected the red clip to the hot (black) wire, and the black clip to the ground. Turned on the probe and started searching all over the house. Everything made sense. I could trace it to the garage, and various other places. Went into the utility room, and no tone over the breaker box - again, just as it should be. Just about to leave the room when it started making noise near the door. Looked to my right - there was a huge shelf that we have always had stacked up with suitcases, tents, sleeping bags, etc. Pulled those out, and there was the missing GFCI. Tripped, of course. VERY IMPORTANT: Went upstairs and pulled all of the testing gear off the outlet, put the outlet back together, then turned the breaker back on, then pressed reset on the recently discovered GFCI. All is back to normal. Electrician probably would have done the same thing in 10 minutes and charged $200. The only reason I can't give it 5 stars is that it is clearly made inexpensively - cheap plastic, etc. I am sure it will not last forever, but in one used it has already paid for itself many times over.