Tried a new 'no-touch' voltage tester on a job and it gave me a false negative
I was working on a kitchen remodel in a 1970s house last week, swapping out some old outlets. I grabbed a new non-contact voltage tester I'd just bought, a Klein Tools NCVT-3, to double-check a line I thought was dead. The thing stayed silent, no lights, so I figured it was safe. When I went to pull the outlet out, I got a pretty good zap. Turns out the wire was live but buried under a bunch of old cloth sheathing and plaster dust. The tester just couldn't pick up the field through all that mess. I learned the hard way that those tools have limits, especially in older homes with layers of junk around the wires. Now I always follow up with my old reliable probe meter to be sure. Has anyone else run into this with the newer non-contact testers in messy old work?