Western 302 won't ring

[Stuntman Stu]

Hi folks,

First post here. I got a Western 302 from a US seller. The seller warranted that the phone worked and it does indeed dial and I can have a conversation on it. Problem is it won't ring. The seller said it did ring when it left New York. I thought it might be my phone provider (Canadian digital phone service over cable), but I also have an old North Electric Galion that rings just fine.
I've checked wiring diagrams and everything seems to be okay, except for how the ground was rewired.
Pic is attached and any help you can offer this newly afflicted sufferer of phonitis will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Stuntman Stu]

Hah! Just realized this is NOT my first post as I did have issues with the Galion I mentioned.

[Kenton K]

could you tell us where the ringer leads connect to? and where the capacitor (rectangular thing on right) leads connect to? And the small yellow capacitor as well.

That should help us determine if it is correctly wired.

Ken

[Tim Mc]

My guess is that it's a 306 with a 195C condenser, with only red and black leads for the talk circuit.  Someone added the yellow capacitor for the ringer.  I would try flipping the ringer leads:  black ringer lead to L1 on the 101 coil and the red ringer lead to the capacitor on the "G" screw on terminal block (which is just a terminal screw and not a true chassis ground).  The capacitor should be 0.47mF or 0.5mF.  You can also try to adjust the bias spring between the ringer coils.  The B3A ringer was used on 306s for party lines and may have originally used a tube instead of a capacitor for selective ringing.  I think I wound up having to replace my B3A with a B1A.  Worst case, you might need to pick up a B1A ringer.

[poplar1]

Good catch, Tim.

When WE converted 306s, they used a larger capacitor for the B3A ringer. You might want to add a second capacitor of about the same value in parallel with the yellow one, to make a total of approx. 1.0 uF.

[Tim Mc]

And to think that I may only have needed to add a larger capacitor to make my B3A ringer work!  I just picked up some .47mf & 1mf capacitors, so I might give it a try myself.  Thanks for the tip!

[unbeldi]

A B3A ringer has a DC resistance of 2000 ohms, less than half of the B1A (4600 Ω), but it is twice as high as the typical 534A subset.  The 534A had a 1 μF capacitor, resulting in a REN of ~2.5.  I have had occasional problems running 534As on Cisco FXS ports.

So, I would think that 0.5 μF would be enough to run a 2kΩ ringer.  But this depends entirely on the source of the ringing current, of course, and it seems that in this case that is a CATV ATA.  It's hard to blame the seller of course, as it may have worked there perfectly well. Adding a second cap in parallel should be successful.

When you touch the ringer with the finger, to you feel any vibration whatsoever?