That reminds me of a talk a power utility troubleshoot gave to a Ham Radio Club meeting way back in the 70s that I attended. It's known that bad metal hardware on the pole insulators and attachments can create EMI noise that can effect local ham radio operators trying to work weak signal DX, and often Hams would call the utility co to complain. The problem is that it is often very intermittent, only acting up at certain temps or certain wind loads at certain directions, or at certain current loads, etc. To say nothing of which specific pole in a local area could be the offending one makes IDing pretty challenging.
The troubleshooter said the best method they came up with is using a simple portable radio tuned between stations, so just listening to inter-station static. Seems that then taking a sledge hammer to the base of a pole with a few hits will usually shake things up enough to cause the static level to peak up pretty reliably on poles with bad or loose hardware. So they would just walk the street hitting poles till they find the bad one. The main problem with that method is that he said the local people would often see them hitting the pole with the sledge and call 911 on them!