Princess Phone not ringing

[Kelpie]

Hello,
I'm new here and just finished a touch tone princess phone from 1972 and have some questions. 

It does not ring, but does dial out.  I have Comcast VOIP line and my old 202 and 302 phones dial and ring with no problems.  On the princess, I hooked up the red and green wires to the two that were in the jack, but to get the lamp to work, I used the black and yellow wires in the jack to power the lamp, since they did not have any wires connected to them in the jack.  The lamp and dimmer work.

What can I do to get it to ring?  I read one post that said to connect the yellow wire also, but my jack had nothing connected to the yellow connector so that's what I connected the transformer to.

[poplar1]

The black ringer wire should be on L1 (where the green wire from the wall is inside the phone). Is this a modular phone (4 wires to wall)  or hardwired (5 or 6 wires to the wall)?

[Kelpie]

This was changed at some point to a modular wire, and they disconnected the light.  I reconnected the light  to the black and yellow wires in the modular plug with the transformer since I only have the green and red hooked up in the wall jack.

[LarryInMichigan]

Move the black wire from the ringer to the "L1" terminal.

Larry

[Kelpie]

Thanks,

I'll give that a try.

[poplar1]

For future reference, any time you get a Western Electric phone that someone other than the phone company tried to convert to modular, 9 times out of 10 the black ringer wire will be connected to the yellow line cord wire and will have to be moved to L1.

This is because originally the yellow and green wires going to the wall from the phone would be connected to the same screw at the wall, but with a modular cord, each wire goes to a separate wire in the jack.

[Kelpie]

Well, I moved the wire to the L1 terminal, but it still does not ring.  Is there a way I can test the ringer coil?  The ringer has two red and one black wire coming out of it.

[LarryInMichigan]

You can look at the diagrams here: link.  It looks like there should be four wires going to the ringer.  The black wire should be connected to L1 and the red wire to "K".  The "A" terminal should probably be connected to "L2".  Internally, there is a capacitor between "A" and "K".

Larry

[poplar1]

And the other two ringer wires ("slate" (gray) and red/slate) are not used; they should have insulating sleeves (or tape) on the ends of the wires. If you have a meter you could measure the resistance across the red and black ringer wires; somewhere around 4600 ohms. (You should probably disconnect the wires first to make sure you are measuring only the ringer coil.)

[DavePEI]

And the other two ringer wires ("slate" (gray) and red/slate) are not used; they should have insulating sleeves (or tape) on the ends of the wires. If you have a meter you could measure the resistance across the red and black ringer wires; somewhere around 4600 ohms. (You should probably disconnect the wires first to make sure you are measuring only the ringer coil.)

I have had Princess ringers go open before, though it is rare. Poplar1 is correct - the best way to make sure is to measure the resistance of the coils with an ohmmeter.

[sesjrs]

I am trying to wire in a princess ringer into a WE 233 Payphone.  There is room, it looks to me, to mount it to the coin chute.  Or I could use another single gong ringer that I have.  I can't seem to figure how to wire it into the payphone.  The ringer itself has 4 leads, red, black, and two gray which are both taped and not in use.  Can anyone tell me how to wire it in so I don't need to add an external ringer?  I am doing this for a customer.
Steve

[poplar1]

You need only the red and black ringer wires; the other two wires should be taped up or cut off. Connect black ringer wire to one side of the incoming line (green). Connect red ringer wire to one side of a 0.47 uf capacitor, and the other side of the capacitor to the other side  of the incoming line (red).

If you are adding a network inside the pay phone, then you would use A and K on the network.as the capacitor terminals

[Kelpie]

Moved the red wire to the K terminal and all is well now.

Thanks,

[280Parka]

If your Princess doesn't ring, try this first.  I just rebuilt my first Princess Phone.  A red '69 702B (refurbished by WE in the '70's, but the sticker was missing so I don't know exactly what year) with a 4010B Network and a MIA(?) ringer.  I couldn't get mine to ring either, tried everything above but still no luck.  I then noticed the ringer "switch" on the bottom has three settings, "LOUD", "SOFT" and an unmarked setting.  Apparently the unmarked setting silences the ringer, so move it to LOUD or SOFT to test.

[280Parka]

About the ringing, it sounds more like clacking than ringing.  The two settings make it clack louder or softer.  It doesn't really have a ring sound, at least not to me.  Is this normal for a Princess?  Maybe this was on purpose since it was originally meant for bedside use?

I was pleased with the results.  When I received it did not have a light socket and the black and white lamp power leads had been clipped.  I found a replacement socket, lamp, and WE 2012 A transformer so everything works as it should now.   Also the number ring assembly was a mess with all of the rings loose.  there was even vestiges of hot glue that someone had used to hold it in place.  All of the parts were there thankfully, they just needed to be cleaned up and reassembled in the proper order.  The plastic body and handset also had some fairly deep scratches and dings.  So I sanded them out before polishing.  First time sanding, so I was a bit apprehensive and consequently was unwilling to sand too deeply.  A few of the deepest dings are still there, although you can't see them in the photos.