DIY Guitar Cable Tester

Hello Wozn here from the band Rooftop Ridicule. Today I'm going to help you make a quick simple cable tester that's already saved me much time and heartache. You don't realize until you have one how useful it is to confirm in a second whether a cable is trustworthy or not, not to mention handy. You can't always be sure with an amp and a guitar when input jacks are so often the culprit, you may think you have several bad cables, and sometimes you're right. This way you can confirm or rule-out the cable for sure.

Step 1 Gather Parts

you need:

two stereo 1/4" jacks
three leds (recommend: 1 red 1 green 1 yellow 'cause that's rasta)
three 330ohm resistors
a little speaker, from say a clock radio or something, this is OPTIONAL
9v battery clip
9v battery holder
9v battery
wire
a box

thats it my friends!

Comments

[xenocoder]

Thanks, really cool project and useful. One thing you may want to add to the "parts" list is the SPDT switch? I may have missed it but I don't think it's on the list now.

Again, thanks for the posting!

[macman808]

can i use 1k resistors instead?

[wozlaser]

not with 9v

[TragicSnowfall]

What if your cable testers inputs break?

[ze.gmonteiro]

Very easy and useful project. I did it almost the same way, but also added two XLR jacks (male and female), attached to the 1/4". With this I can teste 1/4" to 1/4" cables (both mono and stereo), XLR to 1/4", 1/4" to XLR and XLR to XLR.
Thanks a lot

[wozlaser]

that's great! do you have a link to a good pinout of an 1/4" to XLR cable so when I add xlr, I wire mine up in a way that makes sense?

[ze.gmonteiro]

No, I simply connected the 1/4"  (stereo plug) and the XLR at the same time. (n° 1 of 1/4" with n° of XLR ...)

[Awesome-aniac]

Very simple idea.  If you make it smaller, you could probably sell it and make lots of money.