That $30 voltage tester I used for 5 years was lying to me

I was troubleshooting a no-power situation on a 3-way switch circuit in a house built in 1978. My old no-contact tester kept buzzing near the travelers, so I figured the switch was bad. Replaced it, nothing changed. Finally broke down and got a Fluke T6-600 after a journeyman buddy raved about it. Found out the real problem was a loose neutral in the junction box upstream the whole time. Has anyone else had a cheap tester lead them down the wrong path?

3 comments

3 Comments

hayden4661mo ago

Did you try one of those outlet testers with the 3 lights that shows open neutral vs hot/ground reversed? I picked up a Klein one for like 15 bucks after my no contact pen pulled the same trick on a dead outlet. It told me right away it was a neutral issue and I didn't even need to break out my meter. That little thing saved me from chasing my tail on a 4 way switch setup last year, it caught a loose neutral in the first box I opened.

bens812mo ago

My first non-contact tester cost me a whole Saturday rewiring a light fixture that was perfectly fine. I had one of those cheap orange pens from the hardware store and it kept chirping at a wire that turned out to be completely dead - just picking up juice from the Romex running next to it in the ceiling. I felt like a total rookie when I finally pulled out my old analog multimeter and saw zero volts. At least I got really good at wire nuts that afternoon!

oscarb772mo ago

Honestly, nobody's talking about how those cheap testers can pick up ghost voltages from induced fields, especially on older wiring like that 78 house. Tbh, your old tester wasn't totally lying, it was just too sensitive and couldn't tell real power from phantom energy. That loose neutral was probably creating a capacitive coupling effect that made the travelers look hot when they weren't. Ngl, I've seen guys chase bad switches for hours because their no-contact pen lit up on dead wires running next to live ones. A proper load tester or a multimeter with a low impedance setting would've caught that loose neutral day one. It's wild how much time people waste because they trust a $30 toy over basic diagnostic habits.

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