Interesting ... wonder if it's worth the money and that much better than the simple continuity test I have been using.

Is anyone using this Test-um product, and if so have you any feedback?

[Link: test-um.com]

Try this product from the same company:

TP-300
It does a lot more

Odd...I have this one, and although I know you can use the wire lead to RG45 adapter to check continuity, I don't know of any "speaker identification" function or markers available for this ... are there?

er, never mind - just found it!

[Link: test-um.com]

Thanks for the heads up!

The speaker seeker works ok. Sometimes 4 will read 5 and sometimes 7 will read 8, etc. The best way to use the speaker seeker is to use the numbers that are far apart from each other. It saves time, but I wish it was more accurate. It basically works like a ohm read. 1 acts as a 1 ohm resistor, 2 acts as a 2 ohm resistor, and so on.

Mike

Yoinks ... called av*D for a price quote on this, and it's nearly $60!?!? For 20 sets of wires with a resistor and alligator clips ... sheesh!!

This is a REALLY good example of why we buy test equipment. This is just about the simplest thing in the world, right?

Get out your stop watch.

Source the alligator clips. Buy them the cheapest way you can. Don't forget the time it takes you to find several sources so you will know you have the lowest price.
Source the wire. Best is to get precut little pieces of red and black wire. Be sure to get the flexible type with insulation that lasts longer than normal speaker wire, because you are going to be tossing it around much more than speaker wire.
Source the resistors. Figure out how you are going to connect it all and protect the resistors (count that time, too).
Buy it all.

Stop the stopwatch and record the time.

When it has all arrived, start the stopwatch again. Et cetera: getting out the soldering iron or crimp connectors, assembling, covering with heat shrink, etc.

Stop the stopwatch. Add up the time and multiply by your hourly labor rate.
Add the costs of the parts and your shipping costs. If you actually knew where to go get it, add that time at your hourly labor rate.

$60 will be such a deal!

You raise a good point - I suppose where I was coming from was that the Resi-tester kit itself cost me maybe $150 ... so it's just kind of shocking that this "accessory" kit would be nearly 1/2 that.

For 20 sets????

Sounds reasonable to me!

But then, I still have $18,000 worth of Snap-On tools collecting dust from my car audio day's! (not to mention the duplicate+ set I have at home!)

Ernie,
I would think it might eat up pretty much a whole day of chasing around, and assembly... (8 x $75 hour = $360 + cost of material vs. $60) Hmmmmmm.

Just bught one and used it to trace a Phone job that one of my competors had botched and had been out to fix 5 times. The had taken the entire phone lines for the house and took a tan wire nut and tied them together. Took me 1 1/2 hours to fix and trace. I'll put that one in my back pocket (I love it!!).

As for the Speeker seeker worth the 60 bones.

This is why, when I worked at a place that made loudspeaker systems, when someone called for information on individual drivers because they wanted to design their own speakers, I would ask them if they were ready to get into an open-ended research project. We could devote a couple hundred hours to a speaker design because we would then make several thousand.

Home projects happen because the doing of the project catches the fancy of the person, or because it is needed and there is not enough cash on hand. It's almost never strictly practical, but we don't always decide things rationally.

It's like th company I work for, while my division is small, the other side does about $25 to $30 mill annually, yet a few months ago the owner and I were out for a couple days troubleshooting his home's security gate in down pouring rain... I had to finally ask him... Uh so how much is YOUR time worth???

Does anyone know the difference between the TP-300 and the TP-350? They appear to be the same and the website description isn't very much help. Is the TP-350 the replacement model for the TP-300?

CJ