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Trimline Wall Units

Started by princessphone, February 23, 2015, 06:00:14 PM

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princessphone

Hi there,
I'm trying to restore a couple of vintage Trimline wall units. (Kind of house bound in this kind of weather) Several of these units have the modern modular jack at bottom of wallbase for the handset cord (It's actually a narrower version of the RJ14). It also may be that the factory refitted them with the modern jacks.
What I want to do is change it back to the original 5 pin jack in order to use the thick handset cord.
I have 227D & 227A adapters, however they function in the wrong direction.
What I need is the 5 pin jack (female) with 5 short leads attached. These snap right into a small bracket at bottom of base. Does anyone know the part number or name of these pieces? Has anyone a couple for sale?
Another thing puzzles me. As in the Contempra Phones, I think that a 5 wire cord was required because half the guts of the phone was located in the handset and the other half in the base, if that is the case why would some of my units work well with only a 4 wire handset cord? Even the 8V incandescent light bulb works as it should.
I really like these Trimlines, however there appears to be so many variations and derivatives that I find them a bit challenging.
Personally I think they erred when they slapped an extra chassis on the bottom of wall unit just to accommodate a wall mounting plate. This makes the phone stand out from the wall by almost an inch.
I have a nice "single chassis" wall unit (AC2P 80030  R82 6) Which would really suit me, however I think it's not compatible with the vintage hand sets, wiring, LED light etc. 
Also I just found out that WE made two distinct wall unit shells. I think that the shallower version looks better. Were names given to these different styles?
Looking forward to hear your comments.
John DeJonge       

poplar1

Contempra required 5 wires in the handset cord  because the network is in the base. Had the Contempra had a dial lamp, then that would have required a 7-conductor handset cord.

Trimlines, on the other hand, have the speech network in the handset. The only parts in the base are the hookswitch and the ringer. 5 wires were necessary only for certain party line customers so that calls could be automatically billed to the correct party. So that's why yours work with 4 wires, even with incandescent dial lamps. Once the dial lamps were changed to LED, then only 2 conductors were needed.

The adapter plates were added to existing phones so that they could be reissued in a modular environment. New AC2P bases were manufactured with a slot for the 523A plug, so that an additional adapter plate was not needed on these newer bases.
"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

princessphone

Thanks again polar1. You've helped me out many times. I'm starting to get a handle on these Trimline babies. Hope that I can help you with something some day.
Best regards, John