My review of the Suttle low profile modular wall mount jack / DSL filter

[MaximRecoil]

I've had DSL for 6 or 7 years now, and the beige plastic box DSL filter that you have to sandwich between the wall jack and the phone has always annoyed me. I didn't like the way it made the phone project out from the wall an extra half inch:



Phone service was installed in this house ages ago by the Bell System, so there is no network interface with a master jack, so filtering all the phone lines back there and then running a separate line for the DSL modem wasn't a convenient option.

Someone on this forum in an old thread I was reading mentioned a wall mount jack that looks like an ordinary jack, but has a DSL filter built into it (link). It's made by Suttle, the same company that made the DSL filters the phone company gave me, that I've been using for years now without issue, so I ordered it.

The old Bell System-installed wall mount jack that has been on this wall since my earliest memories, is flat on back so it can mount straight to a wall without making a cutout (only a hole is needed for the phone line to come through). The new Suttle jack / DSL filter is not flat on back because of the filter components, and according to the instructions that came with it, it is intended to be mounted to an electrical box that's installed in the wall.

So I had to make a pocket in the wall in order to flush-mount this thing. Using a chisel I cut out a rectangular section of the paneling and cleared out the plaster, exposing the slats. I test fit the new jack in there, and it sat flush except for where the screw terminals are, so I used a drill with a 1/4" bit to carve out a groove in the slat for the screw terminals and phone wire to sit in:



After doing that, the jack sat in there perfectly flush (and lined up perfectly with the original mounting screw holes in the wall):





And here is my WE 554 wall phone mounted to it:



This is the house I grew up in (I now own it) and now the phone and how it's mounted looks exactly the way it did when I was a kid in the late '70s and '80s (the black Bell System-owned 554 we had on the wall back then also had a 228A modular backplate).

The jack works perfectly and filters just as well as the sandwich-style filter that I replaced.

[ricky_ticky]

  Thank you so much for these instructions and photos. I purchased the same Suttle dsl filter and realized I wanted to counter-sink it into the wall. I've never re-wired a phone jack before, so you photos gave me courage!

[Mr. Bones]

MaximRecoil,

     Thanks for the excellent tutorial! I will add this set of tricks / tips to the toolbox, and I appreciate your taking the time to share with us. I have no doubt that it will come in handy, one day!

Best regards!

[WesternElectricBen]

That does look much better!
Ben

[twocvbloke]

Though I do love the solution, it does kind of make me glad we have the BT master socket system, where the front lower part is removable and you can replace it with an ADSL filter faceplate that covers the whole house...

[DavePEI]

Though I do love the solution, it does kind of make me glad we have the BT master socket system, where the front lower part is removable and you can replace it with an ADSL filter faceplate that covers the whole house...

IMHO, the best way around having any problems with filters at each phone, is to have a whole house filter located at our demarkation point. From there, the DSL line runs to our Router, and then on to our switches and wireless system, and the voice line runs to the distribution panel and from there to all the phones.

So, never the twain shall meet, no ugly filters, and never a problem is pots vs dsl!

It was the only way to go here, as we have so many phones, then a line looping over to the museum, plus a bunch of computers running off the home network. By splitting it off at the Demark then running DSL and POTS separately it works out perfectly for us!

Dave

[twocvbloke]

IMHO, the best way around having any problems with filters at each phone, is to have a whole house filter located at our demarkation point. From there, the DSL line runs to our Router, and then on to our switches and wireless system, and the voice line runs to the distribution panel and from there to all the phones.

So, never the twain shall meet, no ugly filters, and never a problem is pots vs dsl!

That's basically how the modern BT Openreach master socket works, some come with terminals to which you can add a dedicated modem socket elsewhere in the house, or have the modem plugged directly into the socket itself and the extensions are run from the back of the faceplate, and like you say, the two never meet...

Although Cortelco phones seem to have a knack of unfiltering filtered signals......