I dropped $200 on a Klein tone generator and I'm not impressed

I mean, everyone in this group swears by Klein tools but I grabbed their tone and probe kit and it keeps giving me false positives on live lines. The green label one with the LED indicator. I've had to double check everything with my old beat up Fluke from 2018. Maybe it's just my unit but has anyone else had issues with these newer Klein models?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_mary11h ago

Huh, that's interesting. Maybe the false positives are from the probe itself picking up ambient electrical noise in the walls rather than actual tone, which happens more with the cheaper plastic tips. Try wrapping a bit of electrical tape around the probe tip to shield it and see if that cleans up the reading.

mitchell.avery9h ago

...but honestly I think the issue is people expect way too much from a tone generator in general. Klein's stuff is fine, it just does what it does and you gotta know how to use it. The false positives aren't the tool's fault, it's the environment. Every electrician I know who bitches about false readings is working in some rat's nest of old wiring with ballasts or dimmers throwing noise everywhere. Your Fluke from 2018 probably just has a narrower frequency filter so it ignores more stuff. Doesn't make the Klein bad, makes it more sensitive maybe. You really gonna trust a meter that can't pick up on anything close to a live wire?

sethm581h ago

...and that's kinda funny because the whole tape trick reminds me of this time I was trying to trace a line in this old building downtown and my probe was going crazy picking up every wire in the wall. So I'm standing there with a roll of electrical tape trying to wrap the tip and my buddy walks up and goes "what are you doing, making a mummy for your tool?" Anyway, @the_mary's suggestion is spot on, that plastic tip on the Klein is garbage for noise. I ended up swapping the probe tip with one off an old cheap Amazon kit I had laying around, the metal one, and it cleaned up maybe 80 percent of the false hits. Still not as good as my Fluke but the tape helped too.