AE 80e with a metal bottom.

[Greg G.]

At that same antique store I saw the pink AE 80, they also brought out a beige 80e.  The price was right, $12, but they're not normally the type of phone I look to add to my collection because of their boxy look and other reasons.  But this one had a metal bottom, which puzzled me.  I thought the 80e's all had plastic bottoms (one of the reasons I don't particularly like them).  Did some have metal bottoms?

[LarryInMichigan]

Perhaps the early ones had metal bottoms.  Are there other metal parts, like the hook switch which are metal on this phone?  Does it have a date on it?

Larry

[AE_Collector]

Two possibilities. If rotary it has had the new 80e type shell put on it at refurb. If touch Call it may be a pre 80e '80' Touch call. Need pics and base markings.

Terry

[Greg G.]

Two possibilities. If rotary it has had the new 80e type shell put on it at refurb. If touch Call it may be a pre 80e '80' Touch call. Need pics and base markings.

Terry

It was a rotary.  Not sure when I'll get back there for pics.

[AE_Collector]

Some Telco's refurbished 80's with the new style 80e case to make them more modern looking. The date code on the base would confirm this. 80e's appeared in 1975 and old 80's were discontinued very soon afterwards. True 80e's never had a metal base but pre 1975 80 TC's did and are pretty hard to find.

Terry

[GG]

I'm with Terry on this.  Many are the AE 80s that were refurbed with 80E housings, dial arrow plates, and faceplates. 

I used to think that combination was "cheating," but it occurs to me that it would be perfectly reasonable if you have a nice 80 baseplate with a smashed housing or missing a handset, and enough 80Es around to use one as a parts donor, maybe one with a cracked network board or something. 

OTOH I have a slightly weird one: 80E / TC base assembly, with early style 80 TC housing (white), back-painted faceplate (bright red), and oldschool sliding number label.  Presumably there are also 80E bases that were used with 80 rotary housings too, waiting out there to be found. 

Personally I like 80Es, and the 85E (2-line version) is highly practical.  Anyone out there who has any 85Es, rotary or TouchCalling, in good or better condition (incl. no serious fading; I don't care about the colored facemats, I have a stash of 'em) they want to get rid of, please let me know. 

[AE_Collector]

I have a slightly weird one: 80E / TC base assembly, with early style 80 TC housing (white), back-painted faceplate (bright red), and oldschool sliding number label.

I have one or maybe two of these as well. The old style faceplate and numbercard really make them AE collectibles!

Presumably there are also 80E bases that were used with 80 rotary housings too, waiting out there to be found. 

Haven't ever seen that combo and most likely it never existed since an 80E with destroyed housing would just get a new 80E housing to avoid having to mess with dials etc. Maybe we could put one together though!

Terry

[GG]

Terry - Very interesting; I thought mine was an odd mistake of some kind, but apparently not.  What colors are yours, and how do you think that combination came to exist? 

I also have a beige one that's all standard oldschool 80 TC.  Oddly the dial doens't work behind a PBX because the very high-pitched background tone produced by those old AE LC-circuit dials interferes with DTMF recognition on the PBX but not on CO lines.  For which I expect the solution will be a capacitor across a couple of terminals on the network board, to absorb the high-pitched tone. 

[AE_Collector]

Terry - Very interesting; I thought mine was an odd mistake of some kind, but apparently not.  What colors are yours, and how do you think that combination came to exist? 

I also have a beige one that's all standard oldschool 80 TC. 

Okay, maybe I mis-understood you. You are saying that you have an 80E withplastic base but it has the old type faceplate/numbercard assembly on it? I htought that you meant conventional pre 80E 80 Touch Call. IE: metal base, older type touchpad, 80E style housing and old style faceplate/numbrcard. That is what I have a couple of.

One is black, other might be "Antique White" (newer AE Ivory color). Of course these phones were pre 1975 (pre 80E) as the only touchcall regular desk set available (other than starlite and styleline desk touchcall sets.

Terry

[dsk]

I f you look at EBAY you  may find a t least 3  AE80E's with metal base.

I don't have any AE80 so I cant test, is the base equal, so you just may put an AE80e house on top of an old AE80 base, I can see you have to remove the dial, but what about the hook switch?

Very interesting, indeed. 

I love and hate my AE80E.  In my view, it is the first modern design with plug and play components, (simple) plastic, Printed circuits,  but not completely, it still has some high quality parts inside, you may replace defect parts, not the entire phone, but the first step from ever lasting phones to what we have today.  I love the idea of "Fashion plates"

dsk

[GG]

Hi Terry-

1) For clarification, the "weird" set in question has:

80-E plastic base assembly, HF-802-...SA (paper label on base is scratched up, missing a couple of numbers & letters, appears to be something-something-JSA), dated October 1977.

Touch Calling dial having mechanical keypad assembly and the word OPER in a curved line across the numeral 0, as found on some other 80Es with Touch Calling. 

White plastic housing with "peaked" ridges forward of the cradle, diamond AE logo in the cradle, and "Automatic Electric, Northlake Ill., USA" surrounding the logo. 

Faceplate made of translucent plastic, ribbed on rear, painted bright red on rear, with rectangular hole for number label.

Separate detachable clear number label holder with slot inside for number card and plastic tabs projecting to interlock with tabs on white housing. 

In summary, an 80E base with an earlier type 80 Touch Calling housing, faceplate, and number label. 

2) In addition to this I have a bunch of wholly conventional 80E-series rotary and DTMF phones with 80E style housings with "rounded" ridges ahead of the cradle, "GTE Automatic Electric" logo in the cradle, translucent faceplates secured via a tab similar to WE faceplates, with paper facemats behind them, and indentations on the faceplates where self-adhesive number labels would be used.  Some of the DTMF ones have "mechanical" Touch Calling dials, some have the newer-style "electronic" Touch Calling dials with keys that require less pressure to operate than the "mechanical" ones. 

3) In addition to the above I also have one early type 80 with TouchCalling, NC-802100-JSA dated 1972, with all of the expected components of that series: metal base, beige housing with diamond AE logo etc., reverse-painted brown faceplate and separate detachable number label holder, and dial that has numeral 0 without any "operator" wording above it. 

---

What I think happened to create (1) was that some telco had a stock of earlier type AE 80 Touch Calling plastics, and those plastics entered the refurbishment stream when 80E Touch Calling phones came in from the field with damaged plastics. 

But what I'm interested in is what you think might have happened to create that one, and whether these are more common or more rare.  If rare, then it's possible it was created by a third-party refurb house or by the Ebay seller by mixing the components from two phones that were otherwise not viable for sale. 

What I don't think it is, is some kind of rarity produced wholly new by the AE factory.