This is THE way to use a toner, because you can often follow the wires with the pickup four or five feet away. That means that you can walk down a hall waving the picup and sense wires in an attic.

This trick is not universally known. I showed it to a 20-year phone company employee a year ago. He was amazed.

When you do this, and there are a bunch of wires to choose from, lay them out in a flat series on your hand and then go from one to another with the pickup. If the wire is there, you will ALWAYS get a louder signal on it (unless it is 100' long running the whole way next to another lead -- in that case, confirm with a continuity test). Also, the correct wire will have the least amount of AC buzz on it, usually none.

This is more sensitive in other ways. A couple of weeks ago we tried locating a cable and the best I could come up with was that I found a cable that was NEXT to the one I wanted somewhere. I went up into the attic and found the one I had located was tied to the one I wanted. The prewire guys had neglected to splice them together. That toner technique simplified things.

I have used this method most recently on a CAT-5 out in the back yard where I stuck one alligator clip into the soil. It worked great.