Party Vibe

in telecoms and sound engineering you may encounter a situation where you need to check that there is a good audio circuit on a twisted pair but not cut the cable in doing so (as it may be carrying programme audio or an important telephone call). These croc clips from TENMA (a French company) can pierce the insulation without having to cut through the cable (the test telephone set has 4mm plugs on it which connect to their 4mm sockets). Telephone lines can however have a “strong battery” of 96 volts or 100 volts ringing signal (you should treat all unknown twisted pair wire as potentially carrying any voltage up to full mains (which shouldn’t normally occur can be caused by defect installations); so the clips are well insulated (they are rated for 1000V but I try not to work live on anything that has strong voltage on it).

The louder buzz means the clip has contacted the bare wire in the cable on one side (as the telephone is now an unbalanced circuit the other wire picks up mains hum and interference; then when the second clip connects the “beep” is a signal that is it a good telephone circuit (-48V battery present))

Browse for Products | CPC