Mackie Cable Tester, 5-Way Switch Battery-Powered Connector Test, Black, (MTest-1)

Metal housing for durability. Easy to use. A very handy tool for people using audio cords. Just plug each end of the cord into unit and turn the dial to check each wire in the cords. Uses a standard 9 volt battery, which makes it portable and easy to install.

This saved so much trouble and work. We would arrive at gig's and hunt for good cords. Now we know exactly, which cords are good and which we need to pitch. FANTASTIC!!!

This is a great and portable wire tester for anyone into AV! Also, the company has quite a righteous sense of humor right! While this item is made with tuff metals and well constructed and it does test cables I was hoping for something else, which I don’t even know exists? I was hoping to use this cable tester to see if my speaker wire run had any damage to it or bad connections within the 7.2.4 network. Unfortunately, to test that using this meter you have to have the beginning and end of the speaker wire terminals. It sure would be nice to know if my speaker wire runs were damaged or not and if so which ones as my AVR output transistors just blew up🙂

Great tool. However, I had the same model with a different name - i.e. Live Wire, which I bought from Guitar Center, which just died after a few years - but I'm trying it again here. Mackie has renamed the "TRS" plug to "TRS / TS" but the circuitry is still the same - it does not show TS cables correctly. However, I will attempt to add some photos to this review which show a *workaround* that I came up with which will correctly work with TS cables (see attached photos). This workaround uses a TRS splitter cable on each side of the device - hopefully they will be self-explanatory. So, the device is not perfect, but IMO it's the best one out there for the money.

Solid build quality, easy to use.

This is a pretty good unit. It makes troubleshooting cable quick and easy. You don't have to have a degree to use it, but you should read the book first. Pros: 1) Metal case - durable, heavy 2) 9 volt battery - has a snap in cartridge that holds the battery 3) cross connections of the most common sound connections so you can test all of your most used cable 4) Bright LED's - nice, they can light up a small runway, so don't use this while you are sensitive to light, if you catch my drift. 5) Rotational switch - meh, I really don't want to test each pin one at a time. 6) Owners manual is online, includes internal schematic for those inclined to modify or repair. Cons: 1) No off switch 2) No indication of a reverse polarity protection. So be careful to follow the polarity indicators for the battery. 3) A rotary switch is used to move through the possible connections, so you manually test each contact/pin. There could be a better way, maybe not.

This is a very handy tester. I leave it in my cable bag. It's quick, accurate and reasonably priced. When you have a 10-12 piece band setting up for a gig and suddenly someone's mic or monitor doesn't work, it can eliminate (or ID) cables as a problem very quickly. I use it with a known good cable so I can test in place without rerouting cables. The only problem, and several folks mention this, is that the LED lights are viciously bright! Overall a very handy tool.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? It really is built like a tank; solid steel construction - you can seriously probably run over it with a car and nothing would happen. The knob turns with an aggressive and reaffirming snap. Four serious rubber feet hold it up off the table surface. An XLR cable I assumed was bad definitely was: turning the knob to “2” revealed that it was connected to pins 1, 2, and 3 on the other side - not good. The use of the banana plug ports as a continuity tester is a clever addition: it comes with test leads and shows an LED and sounds a nice tone. That’ll be used for sure. One downside: I am now legally blind. The first cable I tested was sorta the last cable I tested. Stumbled around my house for hours. On the plus side, I can’t see anything except for the LEDs on this unit - they’re so bright they beat blindness, so... at least I’m gonna keep testing cables! But seriously, no joke: shadow puppets on the ceiling. Yes, THAT bright.

I had contemplated building my own cable tester, but it would have cost me four times the price of this item to just buy the parts. It has a clever design concept--it tells you which pin on the "input" connector is connected to which pin(s) on the "output" connector. You use the rotary switch to select which pins to test. There is a "GROUND" LED that lights if the selected pin is connected to chassis ground of the MTest device. However, with the exception of the MIDI connectors, all connectors are isolated from the chassis ground, so this function is basically useless. It would be really useful if it applied to the XLR connectors, as we'd really like to know if any of the three pins in the XLR are connected to chassis ground. But it seems they cheaped-out on the XLR connectors, as they are missing the fourth terminal that usually connect to chassis ground. I'm guessing that previous versions of the device may have used proper XLR connectors, which would have made this GROUND feature much more useful. Otherwise, I can't imagine why they would bother including this feature just for the MIDI connectors. The circuit diagram mis-labels the "GROUND" LED as being green, when it's actually red. Likewise, the diagram mis-labels the "BATTERY CHECK" LED as red, when it's actually green. The "text" instructions get it right though. Speaking of the LEDs, they are horribly, blindingly bright. I had to put a strip of electrical tape over them to make them tolerable. Anyway, considering the price and functionality, these are fairly minor complaints.

Great product. Works fine

これで、各種ケーブルの結線確認が出来ます。自作でXLRケーブルを多数作製することがあり、今まではイチイチ テスターでピンアサインの確認してました。 アッと言うまに導通確認が可能、もっと早くに買っておけば良かったです。一家に1台あればね。 付属の取説は英文ですが、サウンドハウスさんの公式ホームページから日本語取説がダウンロード出来ます。ちなに製品はサウンドハウスさんから超速で届きました。

Must have for most studio gear saves much time

I saved time diagnosing defective XLR and TRS cables.