Mackie MTEST-1 Cable Tester

Every touring case ends up with a bag of cables nobody trusts, and guessing costs more show time than testing ever will. The MTEST-1 takes both ends of a cable and tells you where the fault is: 1/4-inch TRS and TS, 1/8-inch TRS and TS, XLR, RCA, Speakon, MIDI and banana all have their own sockets on the panel, so almost anything in a live or studio rig can be checked against itself.

A six-way switch steps through the pins one at a time so a partial fault shows up as clearly as a dead conductor, and a pair of supplied probes handles continuity checks on anything that will not plug into the panel, including installed runs and speaker terminals. It runs off a single 9V battery, so it works in a loading bay with no power.