First off, I just want to say this forum is amazing. I only just discovered it last night, and I've spent a few hours reading through posts here. The level of expertise here and the professionalism are both exceptional. On to my question:

Say you have unused pairs at a telephone jack, and need to splice a new cable onto those pairs to extend them to a new location. (Not best practice I know, but sometimes necessary.) If you are taking the green and brown pairs of the existing cable, do you splice them to the like colours of the new cable, or to the blue and orange pairs?

I always use same color to color and have for many years. I use that as a clue to me in the future. If I open an outlet and see that, I know it is spliced somewhere. It really doesn't matter though, it just pleases my anal retentive personality.
Mark

Ditto, and , yes, I too must have proctologist in the family tree, somewhere!


KLD

That's exactly what my reasoning has always been. If anyone else works on that jack it's going to be very obvious when they tone it out, that there is a splice being used.

Another installer once told me that he was taught that you should always splice to the first pair of the second cable, so that another tech doesn't waste time trying to trace that first pair back when it goes nowhere. I didn't like that reason enough to switch to his way of thinking, but it certainly planted the seed of doubt.

Thanks for the reply!

Ditto, I find it much easier to trace wires back when they maintain the color code

Mark I do it the same way for the same reasons.

I have since seen the light, after being in the habit of splicing into the 1st pair on the 2nd cable, then forgetting I had spliced. Naturally, when I returned months later, I had forgotten all about it and would proceed to waste a lot of time walking around with toner in hand.

I now maintain color and will attach a small tag to the 2nd cable, behind the jack. I really prefer to run a new cable, but sometimes that is not an option (full conduit, firestop, convenience outlet, etc.)

Holy cow, real telephone men splice on cable count not always on color. If you worked on 1a2 key for a long time you would find that you views on cable splicing would change overnight. And yes, I cut my cable dowm from the VL/SL to the W/BL backwards. If I steel the VL/Sl pair I wire the W/BL to it. If if I steel the yl/Sl pair I wire the w/bl to it. It's that simple.

If I extend wiring from a jack to another jack I try to extend *all* the pairs, retaining pair count. That way pair one is pair one at each and every jack that cable goes to, ditto for pair two, three, and four.

You want color? Should've heard what I was saying about the person who cut and crossed the pairs.

Well then, I guess those of us who were born after 1970 will never be real telephone men.

I did once work on what I think was a Nortel Logic series system. When I got to the site and saw the system I thought someone was playing a bad joke on me.

Logic ten button sets --- yes, Clinton, it was a joke --- even when installed properly. :read: :bang:

KLD