NE 554

[cgmartin9789]

Found this baby - 1955 NE 554 - at a garage sale yesterday. Not much, pretty generic - I believe, but its in excellent shape other than a couple kinks in the cord and a slight grinding noise. It came with some weird backing that allowed an extension cord to be plugged into the back, so i took that off as the plastic was cracked and just placed the plug inside the box. Gave her a good polish, cleaned and oiled the dial and now looks fantastic. However i need to spend some more time on the dial, fully disassemble it and clean it, unless a little bit of grinding noise is to be expected. Thoughts?

[GG]

You might have a #7 dial, which would be expected to be noisy.

A photo of the back of the dial mechanism will enable us to make useful suggestions.

[cgmartin9789]

It is a #7C dial. I guess pictures would make sense.. haha noob in me.

[GG]

Bingo.  Those are inherently noisy but they are easier to service than the quieter #9 dials that followed.  Now with that dial, you could get a metal fingerwheel to replace the plastic one, which was added later.  (If you don't know how to remove the plastic fingerwheel, we can explain.)

Don't indiscriminately oil the dial mechanism, and in particular avoid any oil getting into the governor (the large flywheel-like thingie).  There are two screws, shown at roughly 2:00 and 7:00 in your photo, that hold the gear train in position.  Loosening those screws and moving the gear train mechanism slightly, and then tightening them again, may reduce the noise somewhat.  If you apply oil to the gears, do it in very small amounts using a toothpick to get a droplet here and a droplet there as needed.  A little goes a long way. 

There's an entire skill set involved in servicing dials, that you'll learn over time as you go along. 

However if the phone is working and the dial works correctly, chances are you don't have to do anything to it, it's just naturally that way. 

[jsowers]

I agree. That dial had gear noise even when new. You can hear it in old movies and TV shows when people dial the phone. It's part of the charm of these phones.

Where are you getting the 1955 date from? Is it on the chassis? It has parts that look newer than that. It's a nice-looking phone, but the switchhook, cord, dial and housing look to be later than 1955. The dial is dated 3-64. It's likely a refurbished phone from the 1960s. Not to be picky or anything, but generally we consider a phone to be from the last date it left the hands of the phone company. Sometimes it's when it was born and sometimes it's when it was re-born. I wouldn't doubt that some phones were re-born several times.

Again, that's part of the charm. They recycled before it was fashionable to do so.

[cgmartin9789]

I feel like this phone has definitely been serviced over the years, i guess 55 was the only dates i saw around it. Would the 3-64 mean that the dial was serviced March '64? Are those the kind of stamps i would be looking for? Other than that stamp i havent found anything to indicate servicing otherwise, besides the back plate i mentioned in the first post which has a 78 on the back. I guess this indicates it was serviced at least twice. Where would be the best indicator of the original manufacturing date be located?

[Wallphone]

If there is a date on the network that might be a good indicator. I know there was just another post where the network didn't have a date. I don't know if it was a cross-posting of this same phone or not.
Doug Pav

[jsowers]

Are there any numbers on the plastics? NE wasn't as date-happy as WE, so there may not be any. It's hard to describe, but tapping the housing will tell if it's soft or hard plastic. A 1955 housing would definitely be soft plastic and produce a dull, wooden sound when tapped. Hard plastic produces a sharper sound. But until you've tapped both of them, it's a little hard to tell what to listen for. Hard plastic is also much shinier in appearance, especially after years of use. Soft plastic can take a shine too, but only after refinishing does it shine like a mirror.

The 3-64 on the dial means it was replaced on or after 3-64, either out in the field or in the refurb shop. That's the date when the dial mechanism was made. They could have replaced it in the 1970s for all we know. Since it doesn't have a modular handset cord, it wouldn't be the late 1970s, though I think NE came to modular much later than WE did.

Look on the inside of your housing and handset caps and see if you have any incised numbers. Usually the plastics are the newest part of a refurbished phone. They're the part that withstood abuse the least too, so they were commonly replaced.

Maybe some of our Canadian friends can let us know if NE dated any of the plastics?

[GG]

JSowers re. dating: I tend to go by the baseplate assembly, or in the case of multiple trips through the refurb shop, cite a range e.g. "mostly-1970s." 

The loophole in the "last date found" system is that it's possible to assemble a bunch of components to date-match to a given year or closer, but the result is not the same thing historically as one that was "found in the wild" with those dates on it.

[Eman]

From my growing collection of NE stuff, they typically dated everything, just as WE did. However, handset caps with dates seem to be mostly older, possibly they stopped after they were spunoff in the mid 50s.

Northern never went to full modular on 500/2500s, everything was hardwired (except where it plugged into the wall) until they stopped production.

Edit: Also I've noticed that Northern #7 dials tend to be much louder than their WE counterparts.

[Contempra]

You might have a #7 dial, which would be expected to be noisy.

A photo of the back of the dial mechanism will enable us to make useful suggestions.

Old post.... but true,, I have a phone wit a 7C and its Noisy... but I like it