1963 WE 500. Doesn't ring.

[Phonesrfun]

And an empty wallet.  But phones are more relaxing than counting money.

[JimH]

I've had several 500 and 554s not ringing and found that the yellow and green lead on the line cord need to be connected together.  I've seen several four prong plugs wired this way.  In some cases with a "modular" cord, I've had to put on a jumper wire between the two terminals inside the phone.  This has solved it many times.  Just my two cents.

[Phonesrfun]

Jim:

Good call, but his phone has a bigger problem, in that it has one of the white receiver wires that should be going to GN that is connected to the ringer capacitor terminal "K" that needs to be moved back to GN.  Looks like a previous owner did some creative wiring.  I believe that by having it wired as it is shunts the ringing current through the receiver circuit, keeping the phone from ringing.

[bwanna]

prior de-regulation, the subscriber could "hide" a set, that they were not paying for, by removing or wiring around the ringer.

[LarryInMichigan]

It should be noted here that it was typical, at least for WE phones, for ringers to be connected to the red and yellow line wires.  In the connector at the other end of the cord, the yellow and green wires were connected to the same terminal.  If you are using a four-conductor line cord with a modular connector, it is best to not connect the yellow wire to anything in the phone, since it may connect to something on the other end, such as a second phone line or a DC voltage for princess/trimline lights.   Wherever the phone wiring diagrams show the yellow wire being connected, a jumper from the terminal with the green wire should be connected instead.

It is certainly true that in the old AT&T dictatorship days, the Bell companies would ring customers' lines to measure the current drawn to determine the number of phones connected.  If they concluded that a customer had more phones than they were paying to have, the phone company raised their bill.  The obvious way to avoid this situation was to disconnect the yellow line wires so that the ringers would not be seen by the phone company.  In my youth, I installed many clandestine phone extensions for people and made sure to disconnect ringers and warn the owner about the consequences of connecting additional ringers.


Larry

[dsk]

prior de-regulation, the subscriber could "hide" a set, that they were not paying for, by removing or wiring around the ringer.

Exactly the same was common in Norway, and we had a maximum of 2 telephones, and 1 extra ringer pr subscriber. 
And we had a resistor of 390-400k Ohms in each outlet.
I'm not sure if they really measured anything before they had an error.
The resistor kept a sealing current, and eliminated some errors, have we forgot this today?

dsk

[Phonesrfun]

d_s_k:

Actualy, I can say that I know about sealing current.  It is a small current that is purposely allowed to be on the line so that the CO knew that the line was not open or if a line was down.  It was small enough that it did not interfere with ordinary operation.  I don't think US companies did this very much, or if they did, they used AC in conjuction with the ringer and the cap to test for a completely open line.  We had no resistors across the lines here.

I first became aware of sealing currents in my discussions with Colin Chambers, who I have been trying to get to participate in this forum, but for family reasons has been pretty tied up during the last several months.  He has registered, but never participated.

He also has discussed with me on numerous occasions the use of a transformer such as a TU-016 or even back-to-back loading coils to make an antisidetone network.  When you posted the other day your ideas for a network, I called Colin to see if he had his circuit on his web site.  At this point he has not.  The diagram for his circuit looks remarkably like the Siemens circuit you posted the other day.

If you or anyone else are interested in his site, go to http://oldphoneguy.com/ ( dead link 03-18-22 )

There is a lot of stuff there, including a complete US Army Principles of Communications book from 1953 that has a lot of information about how telephones and switchboards worked at the time.

I, for one am very appreciative of your knowledge and input here, and I am sure others are too. 

[AET]

Well, I got her ringing today.  Funny thing was another wire was misplaced, causing the phone to ring, when hung up on the receiver for a brief moment.  Startled me at first.  But it's now working properly.

[bwanna]

good work, tom

[AET]

Thanks, I'm trying to take at least one day a week to clean or rewire my phones.  I did good this week. Got 3 days in!