Dual Dial Ericofon

[Wallphone]

I found the eBay pics I had saved on the dual dial Ericofon. Has anyone ever seen one of these before? There are not many wires on the pushbutton dial so I'm guessing that it is a PB Pulse dial. The Ericofon Wiki made it sound like only Ericsson made the pulse PB so I'm also guessing that this phone was made by Ericsson.
Doug Pav

[Adam]

The Soft Touch Tone Dialer was a true touch tone dialer (not pulse) that was manufactured to replace the transmitter and transmitter cap of a G5 or G15 standard 500/2500/554/2554/etc telephone set handset.

This Soft Touch dialer has been added to this rotary Ericofon, I believe after-market.

See Paul-F's page about the dialer:  http://www.paul-f.com/softouch.htm

[Wallphone]

Thanks Adam. Not many wires there for it being a true DTMF dial. Does anyone know where to find a wiring diagram for the pushbutton version of this phone? The only one I found in the TCI Library was for a rotary dial. I didn't see anything at Ericofon.com either, but maybe I missed it. I'm still looking for a way to hook up my NE 35QEX 4 wire pulse pushbutton dial either on a 500 or 2500 type phone to test it. I also have a little flip phone that is named the "Clam" that has push buttons but only emits pulses.
Doug Pav

[Adam]

Not many wires there for it being a true DTMF dial.

No, it's got the correct amount of wires.  The soft touch is line powered and designed to simply replace the transmitter in a normal phone handset.  Its normal connections is only two wires, the wires that would normally hook up to the transmitter in the analog set.

It's definitely a true touch-tone DTMF dial.  I have installed them in sets many, many years ago.  IIRC, one drawback of the device was it's easy to touch a button with your mouth or chin and thereby sent unintended tones onto the call.

[paul-f]

Here's a back view of the Softouch for a G handset, showing the concentric circular contacts that connect to the 2 springs in the transmitter cavity.  It replaces the transmitter element and cap

The one in the Ericofon appears to be a bit different.  Perhaps there are just a few extra components mounted on the back or the contacts and G handset mounting components were removed to save space.

[GG]

Interesting and odd.  A bit of a wild mystery to me. 

The numeric-only rotary dial is one of the standard Ericofon variations, found in North America, made by Ericsson (not by North Electric), and installed on Ericsson PBXs.  I have one, used to have more back in the day, might have another in storage somewhere, both of these light green.  The round buzzer mounted on the chassis is standard issue Ericsson. 

However the dial face on that one is a bit odd.  Normally what you see below the dial is a clear area into which a number label can be inserted.  But that area appears to not exist on this version.  So either a) the faceplate was painted yellow and the paint covered this area, or b) the faceplate was made without the slot for inserting a number card, in which case it may have been made by someone other than Ericsson or North. 

The front of the upper housing doesn't appear to have been hacked-at to insert that touchtone dialer: it appears that the molding was designed for it.   And it appears that the housing is actually yellow, not white that was painted yellow.

Here we see some yellow Ericofons:
http://www.ericofon.com/collection/row3.htm
but apparently none in the exact color shown in the odd "dual dial" example.

So did Buscom manufacture Ericofon housings from modified tooling to accommodate their SoftTouch dialer like that?  Or was this some kind of prototype toward that end?  The physical cutout around the touchtone dialer appears too "clean" to be a DIY job of some kind. 

I can't imagine too many of these were actually made, that is, it's something of a rarity as far as I can tell.  And while the added touctone dial increased functionality (like the AE dual-dial phones: use the rotary to dial through your local Strowger exchange and use the tone dial for "end to end signaling"), personally I can't get used to the aesthetic: to my eyes it looks like adding 70s bits to a 50s automobile.

It would be interesting if one of us had ended up with that example, to do a more detailed disassembly with plenty of close-up photos.   

[old_stuff_hound]

The front of the upper housing doesn't appear to have been hacked-at to insert that touchtone dialer: it appears that the molding was designed for it.

I'm far from an expert, but this was my first thought as well. The housing appears made specifically for that touchpad.