I moved into a home that was built 6-8 years ago and I do not know the builder. The living room appears to be wired for surround sound as there are speakers wires in a box in the wall behind the entertainment center. Each pair of speaker wires is labeled "northeast", "northwest", "southeast", etc. The problem is that the other end is buried somewhere in the walls. I don't know how to trace them to find the speaker end in order to install in-wall or on-wall speakers. How do I trace and find the end of each speaker wire without tearing up dry wall? These wires appear never to have been used before. Are there some specific tools to do this? Where would I get them? I really want to use this wiring but don't know where to begin in tracing them. I think devices exist to find hot wiring but these are just dead speaker wires. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Farrell

 

I use a Amprobe load signal generator Model S2600 and a Amprobe receiver model R2000 for jobs like that. These units were purchased from Grainger's, I believe, but were a little pricey. Be prepaired to pay about 500 bucks for a couple of good units. There are probably units out there that are cheaper, but I've never used any of them. These Amprobes have saved me many hours tracing wires buried amoung 100's of other wires and running inside walls and between floors. They work fine on either unpowered lines or powered ones up to 600 volts. When I work on unpowered lines I use a 9 volt battery for power.

 

you can get or order Progressive Electronic's catv/telephone toner at Home Depot. They have a noise generator that connects to one end of the wire. It generates a pulse into the wire that can be picked up thru the reciever as a tone when waived around the location of the wires. I use a set every day. Works great and Should be less than $100. Look for it in the electrical department close to the GreenLee 6ft drill bits or near the electrical voltage testers.