Interesting Ringer Problem

[LarryInMichigan]

I just finished reassembling a a 1958 soft plastic 500, and I noticed that the dial was not breaking dial tone.  I looked carefully at the wiring, and everything was in the correct places, so I disconnected the ringer, and the problem went away.  I took a look at the ringer and spotted the problem.  Some genius decided to remove the coil and put it back backwards.  The result was that the bottom connections to the ringer coil (black and slate-red) were pushing up against the frame of the ringer causing a short.  I unscrewed the bar holding the coil and reattached it the proper way.  Now the phone works.  Who would have ever expected such a thing?

Larry

[HarrySmith]

Nice catch! Not many people would have found that so quickly. Guess you never know what you are going to find in a phone that is over 50 years old! Probably had a lot of fingers in it along the way

[Dennis Markham]

Interesting that you spotted that, Larry.  One has to be careful when removing the coils from the ringer assembly as there can be some magnetic loss resulting in poor performance.  But in this case, you had no choice.  Glad it worked out for you.

For those that may not have seen this document, Jorge Amely did some research on the magnetism of the ringers a while back and made some conclusions about them.  It's worth a read.  The pdf can be found here:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=845.0