WE 323 W

[LarryH]

Okay.  I will be getting this box soon.  I hope this one will work.  Questions, Will there be four wires coming from my WE 20AL to the ringer box?  There are no wires on my phone now.

[bingster]

This will work just fine. I think you'll be happy with that setup. There should be three wires coming from a 20AL.  Just follow the diagram for 685 subset (don't forget the jumper wire), and hopefully you'll be phoning in no time!

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=784.0

[LarryH]

Couple more questions and I know I am annoying, but

What is a jumper wire?

Also, until my box comes in can I wire up my phone direct to the wall to test it?  And how?

[Phonesrfun]

It will not work to wire it directly to the wall, because there is no way to split the receiving circuit from the transmitter circuit without the subset.  Remember that when you buy an older phone that was before, say, the mid 30's you needed both the phone body and a subset.  Otherwise, you only have half a phone.  This is because the electronic parts back in the old days were way too large to all fit in the desk set, so, they split the components into two.  The deskset which is just a connecting point for the receiver, transmitter, hookswitch and the dial as one piece.  The other piece is the subscriber network, of "subset" as it is often called.  It consists of an induction coil, a couple of capacitors, and the ringer.  The subset is wired in between the wall and the desk set.  Your candlestick phone was technically referred to as the desk set.

A jumper wire is a small piece of wire that goes between two terminals on the network.  If you follow the thread that Bingster pointed you to, at the beginning of the thread there is a diagram on how to hook your phone up to the subset you are waiting for.  The jumper is simply a 3 or 4 inch piece of wire that will go between terminals L1 and RR on the network, which is the thing inside the subset with all the screw connections on it.

[LarryH]

I and a friend are are trying to wire up WE 20AL to a WE-685A subset.  Do any of you have any diagrams or can you create one for this specific application?  Thank you in advance.

[Phonesrfun]

Larry:

The 685A subset has a 425B network in it that is a product of the 1950's and is quite a bit more recent than the candlestick was made for, but it will work just fine.  Did you follow the link to the diagrams?

Basically, you need to have the line cord from the wall with red going to L2 on the 425 B network inside the 685A subset, and the green wire to L1.  If the line cord has a yellow and black wire, just tape the ends and don't use them, because yellow and black for the line cord are just extra wires.

You need to get a short length of insulated wire that you can wire between L1 and RR on the network.

The phone should have three wires coming from it, which should be red, yellow, and green.

Connect the yellow to L2 on the network;
Connect the red to R on the network  (Note that there is a big difference between R and RR (Above) don't get them confused
Connect the Green wire to GN on the network (Note that there is a big difference between GN and G.  Don't get them confused either.

Your candlestick will not have a black wire, so ignore the black wire that is on the diagram

The ringer in the 685A network should have 4 wires that should be connected as follows:

Black to L1 on the network
Red to L2 on the network
Slate (otherwise known as gray) to K on the network
Slate with a red stripe to A on the network

Here is a picture of the diagram that has been pointed to in earlier posts:

Hopefully this will get you going.

[AE_Collector]

It is here: http://phonecoinc.com/topic.asp?map=1&horh=home&gorl=list&group=main&category=CandPart&topic=01023.

Larry

So what is the difference between PhoneCo's "Candlestick Network" and an AE Styleline Network (other than the price?) Theirs looks like something they had custom built but I sort of wonder why when they must have had a barn full of beat up Stylelines to remove networks from.

Terry

[LarryInMichigan]

So what is the difference between PhoneCo's "Candlestick Network" and an AE Styleline Network (other than the price?)

The "candlestick network" is made by Phoneco.  It fits into the transmitter cup and replaces the transmitter.  It also includes a warbler for ringing.  I installed one into my WE 20AL because I didn't have a subset, and the transmitter didn't work well anyway.  The network works reasonably well, but I suspected that its ringer circuit was causing a partial short because I was experiencing weird problems on my phone line when calls were received, so I disconnected one of the line wires to the network, disabling the ringer.

Larry

[AE_Collector]

Oh, I see. It's a network, ringer and a replacement transmitter. Not a bad idea except it must displace the original transmitter which means that the original transmitter will be lost in most cases which is too bad.

Terry