I have had great results with all kinds of cables and wires except for coax.

I have used the center conductor as well as the shield with similar results.
I have kept the center conductor and shield separate, as well as tied them together.
I used one and two leads on each side.
I used grounding method with mixed results.

All of those challenges are related to trying to find the coax wire in the wall as well as in the bundle.
I never have issues locating and then pinpointing coax at the end of the cable; only along the cable's run.

I don't deal with multiple coax runs often so maybe I just need more time and practice with it.

If you guys have any tricks for coax wire, I'm all ears.

Heres my Toner Tip-

when you are trying to tone a 66 block hold the wand in one hand with your thumb on the button and a finger on the probe tip. take two fingers on the other hand and run them down each side of the 66 block.

you can fly down the blocks and don't have to worry about disconnecting a call if your probe has a metal tip.

Now that I think of it, my toner has a plastic tip installed but did come with a metal tip. Which do you think I should be using for locating wires in walls?

Are we still talking about tools here?

Excellent tip, Proggeius!

I also forgot to say that you're not going to get A THING along the path of the wire if it's in metal conduit.

And if the wire runs along the foil side of a sheet of insulation, you may detect tone over the entire wall.

Let me state the strange: a non-metallic tip can detect which wire has the tone on it by touching the non-conducting jackets of the different wires. That doesn't make sense but it's true.

Speaking of tips, I have never used a metal tip. The plastic or whatever it is works just fine. And:


If there is any reason for using a metal tip, it's where you must make a metal to metal contact with a wire. All of the hints and methods I've used have been with the nonmetallic tip, so I say just use that one.

Good to know. Thanks.

FWIW:


I've got used to connecting one lead to the wire I want to trace, and the other lead to my four foot aluminum ladder.

The toner will sound loud and clear at that time.

This just happened (well, 3 hours ago) and I feel compelled to share.

I just got my first IP camera and I went to install it at my house.
I have Cat5 wire sticking out of the wall, but didn't know where the other side was terminated so I asked my new helper to put the alligator clips on each one of the 8 wires and connect it to the tester/toner that I have. [Link: specialized.net]

After he successfully found the other end on port 44 of my patch panel, I asked him to put the 'remote' of the tester into port 44 and see if the tester gives us a passing result for pin-out and continuity.

He told me that tester showed 'open', to which I responded that he must have had the wrong port on the patch panel.
He went back and forth 3 different times to switch mode on tester from test to tone mode and each time port 44 toned as the strongest signal.

Frustrated, he told me that he gave up and didn't know what was wrong.

After putting ankle, knee and wrist braces, I grabbed the crutches and picked up my broken ass from the chair and stumbled over to the wall where the cable was hanging.

It took me a minute to realize that my helper never stripped insulation from individual conductors!

Probe/tone worked thru insulation, but continuity obviously did not.

If you gave me 10,000 guesses as to what could have caused the issue, I don't think I would have guessed that one :-)

Good info guys. I'll try the ladder truck. And I promise to strip the wires. Haha.

That's because the ladder is large enough to act as a ground, or at least as another element of an antenna.

See, this thing isn't just audio and continuity, it's induction and semi-continuity and characteristics that are more like RF than like the signals we're used to dealing with. That's why it can detect its signal at a distance. But when we go back to plain old continuity testing, we have to go back to plain old stripped wires and a battery for testing.

Keep an open mind about how this thing works, but remember simple realities. An old New Age saying was "Don't keep your mind so open that your brains fall out."

I use one of these when I have no idea where a wire goes. Not this make or model but same idea. [Link: testequipmentdepot.com]

I have found it to be by far the fastest way to map "take over" pre-wire houses. It is definitely more expensive than a usual wire toner, but if you find yourself chasing out unlabeled wire locations on a lot of occasions it pays for itself quickly.

I have to admit that we locate our own underground plant as we are an ISP as well, so we already had it.