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I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guita

I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut. I was irate, having paid $10 for these. So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely did, and were selling their awful snips but had changed their name and paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews again. I've been far more aware as of late that whenever I search for something (say the staple gun I recently got my wife) all I get are offbrand or knockoff results showing for often several pages. I have to go, figure out which brands are reputable and then come back to actually make my purchase. I'd rather just go to a brick and mortar at this point. I'm definitely not renewing my amazon prime.

paulgb 8y ago
I had a similar experience with a cookbook I was gifted that turned out to be fake: the author had impressive credentials (top culinary schools, etc.) but when I went to find more information about her I couldn't - all I could find was the same "author photo" for sale on a stock photo site. The book was a cobbled-together collection of recipes, some incomplete, apparently collected haphazardly from around the web. I left a review saying this on the book, and Amazon deleted it because they thought my review was fraudulent. Of course, the book at the time had a 5-star rating from fake accounts.
jahewson 8y ago
Ha ha, I had the exact same experience cutting guitar string with wire cutters from my local dollar store.
- lxhws 8y ago
  This will be your experience 99% of the time using cheap wire cutters on strings. They’re meant for soft copper wire, and strings have steel cores! The $5 guitar string tool will work every time, though.
joshu 8y ago
inexpensive wire snips are usually only good for cutting copper wire, though. they aren't made of hardened steel, which is necessary for cutting the steel guitar strings.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  $10 is not inexpensive for wire snips though. Which is my complaint.
  - lostapathy 8y ago
    $10 is nothing compared to the cost of high end, quality hand tools that will last. In the case of a expecting to cut hardened wire, the cutter needs to be of a good alloy and hardened adequately to hold an edge. $10 doesn’t buy anything from the knipex catalog, for instance.
    - crowbahr 8y ago
      Guitar wire should be perfectly fine to cut with $10 snips. The $5 Stanley brand snips that I got to replace my terrible ones work like a charm. I recognize I don't have the heaviest duty cut-through-anything shears that I could have with more money, but where I'm mainly doing light jobs like speaker wire and guitar strings it's not a problem... unless the snips themselves are terrible. I don't expect to have to replace the Stanley set unless they become rusty from disuse.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    I worked in electronic sub-contract manufacturing for over ten years. We built products for coal mining, and test equipment for aerospace, and products for a variety of domestic and commercial uses. All of this involved use of a wide range of hand tools. A few people have told you that wire cutters come in two forms: hardened and not hardened, and that if you wish to cut steel you should buy cutters that are rated for steel. The price does not tell you this information. The data sheet for the tool does. Here's a pair of snips that cost over £50. I'd be displeased if you borrowed mine and used them to cut guitar wire. https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0614766/ https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0614766/ One thing you can't see in the images is that these cutters tell you what wire you can cut on them: https://imgur.com/a/Zk3LBCE https://imgur.com/a/Zk3LBCE If you want to cut steel you need snips that specifically say they can cut steel. These don't have to be expensive: Here are some for £7. https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0732820/ https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0732820/
johnvanommen 8y ago
> I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut. This is normal. For instance, when I work on my bicycle, I have to use a $40 Park Tool to cut brake lines and shifter cables. The $40 tool delivers far better results than you could ever get from a conventional wire cutter.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  $10 snips should be better than that! I replaced them with $5 Stanley wire cutters that had 0 issue dealing with guitar strings. So what happened is I was given a 10c piece of junk and paid $10 for the privilege of being ripped off.
joemi 8y ago
> So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely did, and were selling their awful snips but had changed their name and paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews again. I wouldn't be so certain about that. I've found that there are a lot of sellers selling the same things, but they're not the same sellers under different names, they're just getting stuff from the same places. Often, for cheap things, the source is AliExpress (or Alibaba), or potentially cutting out that middleman and just getting them direct from the companies that sell on aliexpress/alibaba. It's also been my experience that pretty much _anything_ that isn't a big name brand item being sold on Amazon can be found for much much cheaper on Aliexpress. The exact same product, just without the 1000%-2000% markup.
CamperBob2 8y ago
A good pair of dikes starts at about $80 and goes up from there. Don't use them to cut anything but copper wire. :)
yellowapple 8y ago
Guitar strings (or at least the ones I usually buy) tend to be a lot harder/tougher than your typical electrical wire (electrical wire usually ain't designed to be stretched to high tension and strummed/plucked repeatedly). Not that surprising that a $10 tool would have issues with them.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  The $5 Stanley snips I bought later have no problem. It was just me getting ripped off.

paulgb 8y ago

I had a similar experience with a cookbook I was gifted that turned out to be fake: the author had impressive credentials (top culinary schools, etc.) but when I went to find more information about her I couldn't - all I could find was the same "author photo" for sale on a stock photo site. The book was a cobbled-together collection of recipes, some incomplete, apparently collected haphazardly from around the web. I left a review saying this on the book, and Amazon deleted it because they thought my review was fraudulent. Of course, the book at the time had a 5-star rating from fake accounts.

jahewson 8y ago

Ha ha, I had the exact same experience cutting guitar string with wire cutters from my local dollar store.

lxhws 8y ago
This will be your experience 99% of the time using cheap wire cutters on strings. They’re meant for soft copper wire, and strings have steel cores! The $5 guitar string tool will work every time, though.

joshu 8y ago

inexpensive wire snips are usually only good for cutting copper wire, though. they aren't made of hardened steel, which is necessary for cutting the steel guitar strings.

crowbahr 8y ago
$10 is not inexpensive for wire snips though. Which is my complaint.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  $10 is nothing compared to the cost of high end, quality hand tools that will last. In the case of a expecting to cut hardened wire, the cutter needs to be of a good alloy and hardened adequately to hold an edge. $10 doesn’t buy anything from the knipex catalog, for instance.
  - crowbahr 8y ago
    Guitar wire should be perfectly fine to cut with $10 snips. The $5 Stanley brand snips that I got to replace my terrible ones work like a charm. I recognize I don't have the heaviest duty cut-through-anything shears that I could have with more money, but where I'm mainly doing light jobs like speaker wire and guitar strings it's not a problem... unless the snips themselves are terrible. I don't expect to have to replace the Stanley set unless they become rusty from disuse.
- DanBC 8y ago
  I worked in electronic sub-contract manufacturing for over ten years. We built products for coal mining, and test equipment for aerospace, and products for a variety of domestic and commercial uses. All of this involved use of a wide range of hand tools. A few people have told you that wire cutters come in two forms: hardened and not hardened, and that if you wish to cut steel you should buy cutters that are rated for steel. The price does not tell you this information. The data sheet for the tool does. Here's a pair of snips that cost over £50. I'd be displeased if you borrowed mine and used them to cut guitar wire. https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0614766/ https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0614766/ One thing you can't see in the images is that these cutters tell you what wire you can cut on them: https://imgur.com/a/Zk3LBCE https://imgur.com/a/Zk3LBCE If you want to cut steel you need snips that specifically say they can cut steel. These don't have to be expensive: Here are some for £7. https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0732820/ https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-cutters/0732820/

johnvanommen 8y ago

> I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut. This is normal. For instance, when I work on my bicycle, I have to use a $40 Park Tool to cut brake lines and shifter cables. The $40 tool delivers far better results than you could ever get from a conventional wire cutter.

crowbahr 8y ago
$10 snips should be better than that! I replaced them with $5 Stanley wire cutters that had 0 issue dealing with guitar strings. So what happened is I was given a 10c piece of junk and paid $10 for the privilege of being ripped off.

joemi 8y ago

> So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely did, and were selling their awful snips but had changed their name and paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews again. I wouldn't be so certain about that. I've found that there are a lot of sellers selling the same things, but they're not the same sellers under different names, they're just getting stuff from the same places. Often, for cheap things, the source is AliExpress (or Alibaba), or potentially cutting out that middleman and just getting them direct from the companies that sell on aliexpress/alibaba. It's also been my experience that pretty much _anything_ that isn't a big name brand item being sold on Amazon can be found for much much cheaper on Aliexpress. The exact same product, just without the 1000%-2000% markup.

CamperBob2 8y ago

A good pair of dikes starts at about $80 and goes up from there. Don't use them to cut anything but copper wire. :)

yellowapple 8y ago

Guitar strings (or at least the ones I usually buy) tend to be a lot harder/tougher than your typical electrical wire (electrical wire usually ain't designed to be stretched to high tension and strummed/plucked repeatedly). Not that surprising that a $10 tool would have issues with them.

crowbahr 8y ago
The $5 Stanley snips I bought later have no problem. It was just me getting ripped off.