Beautiful Dark Gray Stromberg-Carlson 1553 wall set

[unbeldi]

I thought I would share the joy of finding this beautiful dark gray 1553 wall telephone made by Stromberg-Carlson.

Surely the dark gray color is not common, as I could only find one instance of this phone on the Internet and that is right here in the Forum, posted years ago by Ray (Kleenax), who recently has been selling a series of gorgeous S-C 1500 series telephones. This one came not from him though.

This type of telephone bears the model number 1553, and is the companion to the more familiar 1543 desktop version. This was S-C's answer to the Western Electric 554, and I have to say that they beat the competition in terms of style and elegance. The model line was made well into the mid-1960s until S-C finally settled on license-cloning the Western Electric 500 series.
However, my set already uses the S-C versions of the U1 receiver and the T1 transmitter.

My example has the specific model number 1553WG, and was made in September 1961, by the stamping on several parts of the unit (32 to 35-61). All part dates are matching within 4 weeks.
As indicated by the G suffix designation, the unit has a 50Hz ringer (73G-50). The W suffix indicates that the set uses a network (210640 RA) that has a self-compensating circuit and the new high-efficiency transmitter and receiver elements. This network operates like the WeCo 425B network.

Base: metal, 1553-WG; 50; SPECIAL; A88#6135
Housing: gray plastic, S-C logo on front
Handset: gray plastic, no markings
  RX: U1-type, 34-61; SC-3 varistor
  TX: T1-type, 34-61; 30
  Cord: coiled gray
Dial: DE315 01#6135; yellow plastic cover: 811#6135; the # is some symbol that looks like the SC logo
  housing gasket: clear plastic
  face plate: gray plastic, dual layer
  finger wheel: lucite plastic, no cracks
  dial center: missing chrome card retainer ring
Network: 210640 RA; 32-61
Ringer: 73G-50; ??-61 (ringer resistance is 3690 ohms)
Condition: very good, a hue of yellowing
Location: estate in Los Angeles, CA

I compared the gray with other gray tones carefully and discovered that the housing appeared to have some slight discoloration, a subtle yellowing. This was hardly noticeable under indoor incandescent lighting, but particularly evident in flash exposure when taken photos. The dial face did not show the same discoloring and therefor this revealed the discrepancy.  It appears the plastic of the dial did not contain any flame retardant additives, at least no bromine-based compounds.

A few hours of bleaching markedly improved the color of the housing. The pics below show the result. The match between housing and dial face is still not perfect when viewed in bright day light.

[unbeldi]

Here is the phone as I received it.

[unbeldi]

It is hard to judge the degree of darkness of grays without comparison, so here is a direct side-by-side view of the phone with the contemporary (1959) light gray WE-554 under the same lighting conditions.

The sun light is very intense, as the light gray (-61) of the WeCo phone shows. --sorry, don't have a dark gray 554, but feel free to send me one.

[unbeldi]

Surely the dark gray color is not common, as I could only find one instance of this phone on the Internet and that is right here in the Forum, posted years ago by Ray (Kleenax)

I just found another one posted by Dennis in 2010: http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=3312.msg44078#msg44078

Here is a link to Ray's phone in 2011:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5546.msg67353#msg67353

Any others?

[david@london]

that is a really beaut phone unbeldi..... i see you located a chrome dial card retainer.
you mentioned kleenax........ i saw this red one for sale last week -

http://tinyurl.com/kbooop4 .....sold for $113.63.

[rdelius]

I have dk grey SC 1575s?  5 line key sets that will work on 1A2 circuits

[unbeldi]

that is a really beaut phone unbeldi..... i see you located a chrome dial card retainer.
you mentioned kleenax........ i saw this red one for sale last week -

http://tinyurl.com/kbooop4 .....sold for $113.63.

Yes, I saw the auction. Very nice polishing work. I would have loved to have it too.
But mine isn't much behind when it comes to condition.
The gray just does not pop into your vision like a red does.