Dave, thank you so much for everything. You inspire me to never stop learning and its helped me never stop moving up in the world of live sound. Youre the man!!!
Currently it is being made by Audio Control who also sells them and distributes them. For the NL4, NL8 and other products in the pipeline are being manufactured by several smaller companies.
Hey Dave , I own 4 different types of tester but now I have the rat sniffer I use only one tester now . The Rat Sniffer . It also works well with all lighting cables also . Thanks
ive kind of been wanting one of these for a while... and now im definitely getting one. i didn't know about the phantom power check, and then using it to supply phantom power too... pretty sweet.
With the separate ends, you would need a common so there would be 2 voltages plus ground which is sort of what the sniffer sender do. The tricky part is getting it to work also using phantom power as a test source and also being able to detect a pin 2 to pin 3 short using phantom power.
this looks so useful! when you think about it, it sounds like such an obvious tool I can't believe it hasn't been around for years already, but that means it's a seriously great invention. Ship to UK please!
Hey Dave, have you ever seen all lights on one of these go red? I have the newer model than what you are showing here, so it has the single LED on the sender and for some reason all 4 LEDs are red when I connect a correctly soldered cable... This just started happening recently and I can't seem to find anyone else that has this issue. Just trying to figure out if the tester will still work, and the lights are inverted, or if I need to get a new one.
Hmmm, is it a XLR or nl4 unit? On off button on the back or the twist on sender? Will gladly send a replacement as all units are always under warranty Or if you want to take a look, it could be the little metal contact is bent. So a small screwdriver down the tube to bend it up to touch the battery could fix it. Else, go to soundtools.com and do the warranty return. Will send a new unit and a bag to return the old one
@wjjackson1 I do not have an exact NL4 sniffer release date but I am hoping in the next month to 6 weeks. As far as 2 core, it will show a single green LED for 1+ 1- wired correct 2 core and different single green for cables with only 2+ 2-. Reversals on either types will show a single red LED.
Dave, around 1:20 you mention something about patching Y cable to talk down the snake thru kick drum channel....can you explain this setup as I'm having a hard time picturing it...but it sounds genius.
+Victor Wong I am half joking but I have actually done it a few times when I am unable to get the monitor engineer to turn on my talk back mic. What I do is unplug the kick drum snake channel from the FOH board, then plug my talk back mic into the snake channel with a female to female adapter or a FM/FM/ML Y cable. I can then talk on the talkback mic and my voice will show up wherever the monitor is sending the kick drum channel. This can be done with any snake line.
Yes it will work on snakes and can be a very fast way of testing. Especially if you turn on phantom power on every channel on the console, then just use the sniffer to check the stage boxes. Except it will not work on transformer isolated snakes. The sniffer/sender detects continuity and transformers will look like a short to it.
