Touring Electrician's Small Tool Kit

[garyvp]

Cheap Edison socket tester for correct polarity and floating grounds - where Edisons are encountered.
Non-contact tester electrical tester, for followup with latter. - I use mine a lot just to find energized circuits.
Solinoid/load based electrical tester - multimeters are great at picking up stray and misleading voltages (like those given out by dimmers to search for 'loads'); these inexpensive and simple devices do not - and they also test for continuity.
Multipoint screw driver
Cyclops led head lamp

 

[STEVETERRY]

This thread gives me the license to tell an old-fart career story about tools.

In 1974, Gary Fails and I went on a European tour with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In trying to figure out what tools to take, I adopted the "take everything" philosophy, since it was all going in company-shipped roadboxes. Thus, my newly self-designed and built frequency counter went into the pile. It was a stretch as to how I would use that device, but I took it anyway. Also in the pile was my Ampex "official" test tape, with calibrated frequency tones recorded on it.

Fast-forward to the first rehearsal at Sadler's Wells in London. The Company was screaming that the tempo of the recorded music was un-danceable. It was too fast. We had Crown reel-to-reel tape decks with synchronous AC motors. I had fitted them with new 50Hz pulleys for the trip to Europe. A quick call to Crown back in the US revealed: "Oh, those pulleys are just rough cut, we fine tune them in each machine to get the precise diameter."

crap.

So:

1. Play Ampex test tape.
2. Measure 1kHz test tone with frequency counter, it's about 1,100 Hz
3. Take pulleys to local machine shop (many of those in London) and get them turned to a new diameter 0.91 of current diameter.
4. Voila! Test tape measures 1kHz.
5. Dancers are happy.

From then on, "Take everything" worked for me.

Those were the days!

Like I said, an old-fart story.


ST