Took a chance on that cheap toning wand, now I won't go back

Ngl, I've been doing residential drops for 7 years and always used my old beeper tone generator. Last month at a job in Fresno I forgot my kit and had to borrow my coworker's $39 toning wand from Amazon. I figured it would be garbage but it picked up a buried line under 2 feet of dirt that my old unit never would've caught. After 3 houses with it I ended up ordering one for myself. The signal detection is way sharper and it doesn't drain batteries like my old one. Has anyone else found a cheap tool that outperformed the expensive stuff they trusted for years?

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xena_murphy7d ago

Man, that's how they get you though. The universe punishes you for being loyal to the old gear right when you're standing in a ditch holding someone else's cheap wizard stick. My go-to used to be a $200 locator that weighed like a brick, and now I'm eyeballing a $25 one my neighbor uses for sprinkler wires. It's cracked and held together with electrical tape, but it finds stuff my "professional" one gets all moody about. Honestly, at this point I'm convinced the expensive stuff is just for impressing clients, not actual work.