Did Western Electric 500 or 2500 phones ever come with 2-wire ringers?

[MaximRecoil]

Also, can a 4-wire ringer be made to work on a phone that only has 2 terminals for a 2-wire ringer?

[poplar1]

The later WE 500s and other models marked "1-Party" or "CS"  had 2 wire ringers. A 4-wire ringer can be used in place of a 2-wire by connecting the red-slate and slate wires together (not connected to anything else).

EDIT: This applies to C4A ringers used in place of C4B but not to Trimline P-type or Princess M-type which have 4 or 5 wires but the red-slate, slate, and blue wires are used only on certain party lines. On those, only 2 wires should be used.

[MaximRecoil]

The later WE 500s and other models marked "1-Party" or "CS"  had 2 wire ringers. A 4-wire ringer can be used in place of a 2-wire by connecting the red-slate and slate wires together (not connected to anything else).

Thanks for the information. So to connect a 4-wire ringer to a 2-wire phone, you would connect two of the wires to the usual location, and then short the red-slate and slate wires together, and leave them dangling?

Just to be sure of the wire colors on a 4-wire ringer; from top to bottom, looking at where they are soldered to the ringer, they are:

Red
Slate
Black
Slate-red

Is that correct?

Also, can a 2-wire ringer be connected to a 500/554 phone that originally had a 4-wire ringer?

The reason I'm asking about this stuff is: I have a Western Electric payphone that has a Protel 8000 chassis. The Protel chassis has a generic 2-wire (a red wire and a black wire) dual-gong ringer with the same style (I think) of mounting frame as a typical Western Electric 500/554 ringer. The problem with the ringer is that I don't like the way it sounds. It is not as loud as a WE ringer, and does not have the same type of sound; it is more "tinny" sounding or something. So I want to swap the ringer with a 4-wire Western Electric ringer that I have in a 554 that's not currently being used, and put the 2-wire ringer into the 554.

[poplar1]

To install the 2-wire ringer in a 500 or 554 that previously had a C4A 4-wire ringer:
run a jumper from L2 to A, connect black ringer wire to L1 and red ringer wire to K.

In the pay phone, short the red-slate and slate together, wrap with some bare wire to hold them together, and tape up.

[MaximRecoil]

To install the 2-wire ringer in a 500 or 554 that previously had a C4A 4-wire ringer:
run a jumper from L2 to A, connect black ringer wire to L1 and red ringer wire to K.

In the pay phone, short the red-slate and slate together, wrap with some bare wire to hold them together, and tape up.

Thanks again. On the payphone's terminal strip there is an unused terminal marked "L1". There are six terminals in total: Ring, Tip, Earth Ground, L1, Black (ringer wire), Red (ringer wire). Do you have any idea what the L1 screw terminal is for? I was wondering if I could use it as a nice, secure point to short the slate-red and slate wires together (i.e., screw them both down under the L1 terminal screw); or if not, perhaps the earth ground terminal? If neither of those points are advisable, I'll just short them together the way you mentioned.

[poplar1]

I'm not familiar with Protel but it seems logical that L1 may already be connected internally to the terminal which has the black ringer wire; if so you can't use that one. Maybe someone else can answer this.

[MaximRecoil]

I'm not familiar with Protel but it seems logical that L1 may already be connected internally to the terminal which has the black ringer wire; if so you can't use that one. Maybe someone else can answer this.

There is no continuity between the L1 terminal and the black ringer wire terminal, nor between L1 and any other terminal.

For now I clamped the two spade lugs together with a short screw and nut, and then taped it up with self-amalgamating tape:



It mounted up and works perfectly, and now my WE payphone actually sounds like a WE when it rings.

However, the 2-wire generic ringer in the 554 isn't working:



The 4 wire ringer was wired like so, and did work:

Red - L2
Slate - K
Black - F
Slate-red - A

[dsk]

  I've been watching TV, and now I know the answer, I heard from some American:
YES WE CAN!

dsk

[twocvbloke]

Bob the builder!!!

Can we fix it?

Bob the builder!!!

YES WE CAN!

We all know where mr. president got that from....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2-Nmk1uFQ

[dsk]

I knew I had it from some....
Maybe my sketch should be modified in honour too Bob the builder?

dsk

[poplar1]

Move black ringer wire to F, where the green line conductor is. (This must be the phone that had problems with the hookswitch and we bypassed one set of contacts.)

[MaximRecoil]

Move black ringer wire to F, where the green line conductor is. (This must be the phone that had problems with the hookswitch and we bypassed one set of contacts.)

Yes, this is the phone that was wired for a business system. It did have problems with the hookswitch (the plastic separator piece had broken), but I fixed that a while ago with a new plastic piece. But yeah, you had me put tip up on F instead of the usual location for a normally wired phone, and that made everything work.

In any event, before I saw this reply of yours, I suspected that the reason the 2-wire ringer wasn't working was because of the network's weird wiring, so I decided to rewire the whole network to make it match my other 554s (which have tip and ring on L1 and L2). After I did that, everything worked, including the 2-wire ringer (which I left wired according to your original instructions).

So the ringer swap was successful for both phones. Thanks again for the help.

[MaximRecoil]

This is from the Protel 8000 manual:



It doesn't even mention L1 in the terminal block legend (a search of the document turns up no mention of L1 anywhere in the manual in fact). I suspect that it does nothing / goes nowhere. If so, I'd like to use it as a point to short red-slate and slate together, simply because it would look cleaner/neater than the two wires just dangling there.

[poplar1]

I didn't realize that there were T and R terminals so you are probably correct that L1 doesn't connect to anything.

[MaximRecoil]

I didn't realize that there were T and R terminals so you are probably correct that L1 doesn't connect to anything.

I attempted to take the Protel chassis apart so I could see the solder side of the top PCB, but there are two snap-in nylon spacers partially holding the top and bottom PCBs together; and even though they are designed to be released by squeezing the split ends, I couldn't get them to release. I could of course cut them off, but I'd rather not; not unless I had replacement PCB spacers on hand.

I did try to find continuity between L1 and something/anything else, and I was unable to do so; there wasn't even continuity between L1 and either of the two fuses, which suggests it goes nowhere, electrically speaking.

So I decided to give it a try:



The ringer still works fine, as does everything else.

At some point I'd like to get an original Western Electric 2-wire ringer from a 500-series to put in this payphone (but only if they had metal frames; the plastic frames just look cheap), and return this 4-wire ringer to the 554. Are original WE 2-wire ringers hard to find?