A conventional measurement of the critical current and other relevant properties of superconducting cables within the field range of 0 to 8 tesla is complicated because of the large current supply required, the strong magnetic forces on the conductor, the minimum bending diameter of the cable and the high running costs of a conventional large scale facility. In our laboratory we have put into use a new small-size conductor test facility in which cables can be investigated concerning their critical current, a.c. losses, stability and propagation phenomena in the field range of 0 to 7.5 tesla. The test current is generated by a single-cycle superconducting rectifier which is designed to generate the cable current in the range to 25 kA nominal with an absolute maximum of 40 kA. In this low-cost facility we started with the investigation of several cables. In this paper we report on the first successful experiments during sample tests of two high-current conductors which are a monolithic conductor for the French TORE SUPRA fusion project and an 11-strand cable which is applied in the generator development program of Siemens. Critical current and propagation velocities were measured and analyzed over the mentioned field range.