Widowmakers from your favourite online sellers

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Normally in my videos, I'll give links to where you can buy the things that I feature, but in this instance, I most certainly will not be giving you a link to this item from eBay and other online sources because it's just far too dangerous. And it's a shame because I like eBay for the more collectible items they sell, but uh they're being polluted with dangerous products like this. So, let me show you what these are. These are adapters that let you go from a standard IEC cable to things like low voltage barrel connectors, XLR connectors, or just male to-male proper Widowmaker. So, let me demonstrate. If you plugged this adapter in and then plugged this into 240 volts, you could then make contact with live connections in here. But it gets so much worse with the barrel connector. Let me just turn on the continuity tester here. I'll bring the meter in.

[00:01:04]I shall put this to continuity.

[00:01:09]And uh if we test from the live pin, that's this one, which is going to uh the outer sort of the sheath of this connector. And likewise the neutral is going to the oop inner connection.

[00:01:29]In the case of this connector, it is an XLR compatible connector.

[00:01:35]You can shove it into an XLR housing. Uh when you plug it in, it's going to be Let me just find this.

[00:01:46]This is the live pin. And it's going to pin two of the XLR and the neutral is going to pin one.

[00:02:02]So definitely not desirable. I'm not sure what these are for. They're being sold as extension cables. Uh maybe it's you get an extension cable that's got the IEC connector, the male and the female on it, and then you use the compatible input and output port at each end. and it's just to make your own custom extension cables for things that they recommend if we use things like vehicle charging. Oh, incidentally, it gives you some helpful advice.

[00:02:31]It's available incidentally in phono connectors. The two uh 5.5 mm barrel sizes. Let me just focus down on In fact, we'll zoom down onto this.

[00:02:45]So, we've got the male tomale. We've got the male to two pin. And it does say if you got the one of the connectors, a flat pin, you can simply snap pins off or twist them around to change the shape. That's very weird. We've got the XLR 3 pin. We've got the two 5.5 mil.

[00:03:00]And we've got the phono connector. So, every avenue of blowing up your audio visual equipment is covered. And it says, "Attention, this conversion cable has been tested and powered before delivery. If you can't charge or the charging post can't be recognized, please use a multimeter to check whether the conversion cable is powered or not.

[00:03:19]Because the charging post and the battery are not compatible and mismatched, the charging post plug aging and battery charging socket aging will lead to the charging situation. If the conversion line is not energized, received by the courier to open the package as damaged, please provide customer service picture evidence the rest of the situation are regarded as non-con conversion cable quality problems. So, there you go. Uh, very strange. Definitely not something I'll be providing a link to because it's just too dangerous. It is literally what they call widow makers because they pose such a high risk of electric shock. Um, but there we go. Um, it's marvelous what you can buy online. Or maybe it's not actually so marvelous in this instance uh of what you can buy online.