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low hum, WE 554 1962 A/B

Started by Netdewt, December 19, 2009, 01:08:36 AM

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Netdewt

Quote from: McHeath on December 20, 2009, 09:54:50 PM
Sounds like you have an older place from the wiring you describe.  My house is wired similarly, no fancy new box with a plug in modular connector, instead a medieval looking hardwired setup that makes troubleshooting much harder.  

Try unhooking the red and green wires from the 554, you don't have to take it off the wall just remove the cover and undo the wires.  Then see if the hum is still there on the newer phone.  If it is then reverse the process and see if the hum is there on the 554 when you have unhooked the newer phone.  

Okay. I finally managed to get around to hooking up the whole house to a proper junction box. As soon as I finished that I checked, still a hum.

Next I went upstairs and disconnected he 554. Now there is no hum on the newer phone, so the 554 is definitely introducing the hum!

Any ideas?

Netdewt

I think I got it. Richard from Ericofon.com (local!) told me to move the wire on the G terminal over to the L1 terminal. It seems to have worked. Grounding issue?



Dan/Panther

Quote from: LarryInMichigan on December 19, 2009, 07:11:16 PM
Netdewt,

The hum is quite possibly noise from the 60Hz power.  It may be coming from some phone device which is connected to AC power (eg. cordless phone, fax machine, etc.).  The first thing I would suggest is to disconnect everything from your phone line except for one old phone.  It the noise goes away, reconnect things one at a time.  I very recently discovered that my HP fax/printer/scanner was introducing noise into my phone line even when it was off.

Larry

Larry;
Very common in radios etc. We call it the 60 cycle hum.
D/P

The More People I meet, The More I Love, and MISS My Dog.  Dan Robinson

Dennis Markham

Netdewt, yes.  The black ringer wire should be on L1, not on G.  That will effect your ring, but may not have anything to do with the hum.

Phonesrfun

The other cause of AC hum is an unbalanced line. Older systems were routinely designed to have one side of the ringer go to ground and the ringer coils were designed such that putting one side of the ringer to ground would not be enough to unbalance the line.

Maybe, since he was feeding one side of the ringer (black) to the yellow (presumably grounded) lead, maybe it DID unbalance the line. However all technicalities aside, the black ringer wire should be hooked to L1 on todays systems, and we should not argue with success.

-Bill G

Netdewt

Quote from: Phonesrfun on December 19, 2009, 02:29:41 PMAny of those splitters that create 2 connections out of one?

In a partially related matter, will I run into problems again if I start adding lines like crazy!?

Also, I only have one cord running upstairs and it would be wait easier to split the line than run another all the way up. Are there any tricks to doing this? Or just twist the lines together?

Phonesrfun

You have the right idea.  Just take the wire from an existing block and extend it to the next, and the next and so on.  All homes and apartments that have wiring behind the walls just hop from one starting point and go from box to box to box.  No need to run "home-run" wires unless you are wiring a PBX, which is another subject entirely.

Now, about that "twisting" you mentioned.  In practice, just twisting the wires together with your fingers and slapping some tape over them to keep them from touching each other will work.  It even works in a pinch when testing or doing an extension temporarily.  That being said, you do not want to just twist the wires together in the long term.  The copper eventually oxidizes and makes for poor connections.  This may take years to happen, but when it does, the noises and other problems it creates can be most distracting.  No, it won't burn down the house, but it sure can be annoying to listen through a bad connection.

Use screw terminals on a connecting block to tie the wire ends down with or use those handy little wire splicer things you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes, or any electrical supply store.  I can provide pictures.

But, please don't just twist the wires together.

Cheers   ;D
-Bill G

Jim Stettler

Quote from: Phonesrfun on March 16, 2010, 12:14:47 AM
You have the right idea.  Just take the wire from an existing block and extend it to the next, and the next and so on.  All homes and apartments that have wiring behind the walls just hop from one starting point and go from box to box to box.  No need to run "home-run" wires unless you are wiring a PBX, which is another subject entirely.

Now, about that "twisting" you mentioned.  In practice, just twisting the wires together with your fingers and slapping some tape over them to keep them from touching each other will work.  It even works in a pinch when testing or doing an extension temporarily.  That being said, you do not want to just twist the wires together in the long term.  The copper eventually oxidizes and makes for poor connections.  This may take years to happen, but when it does, the noises and other problems it creates can be most distracting.  No, it won't burn down the house, but it sure can be annoying to listen through a bad connection.

Use screw terminals on a connecting block to tie the wire ends down with or use those handy little wire splicer things you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes, or any electrical supply store.  I can provide pictures.

But, please don't just twist the wires together.

Cheers   ;D

Most of my house is twist for now, do right later. occasionally I have problems but the solution is just a twist away. Kinda like the mechanic w/ a poorly running car.
It is just the way i am,
Jim
You live, You learn,
You die, you forget it all.

Phonesrfun

Quote from: Jim S. on March 16, 2010, 12:17:57 AM

Most of my house is twist for now, do right later. occasionally I have problems but the solution is just a twist away. Kinda like the mechanic w/ a poorly running car.
It is just the way i am,
Jim

Tee Hee

I Hear ya.  I have done many myself.  And make no mistake,  It does work.

When I first got started with phones I was about 15, and my friend who lived next door and I wanted to have our own phone between our bedrooms.  We scrounged every scrap of wire from all the dads in the neighborhood.  Everything from lamp cords and extension cords to lengths of phone station wire and all sorts of wire, as long as we could splice it together and make it reach.   It was probably 200 feet in total.  We used a lantern battery to power it, and eventually we got a couple magnetos so we could ring each other.  Before the magnetos we had to call each other on the regular phone and agree to meet on our own line.

This was in Portland, Oregon.  It rains a lot in Portland, and it snows there in the winter.  We had dozens of splices in that line.  All were twisted, and some were not even taped.  With rainy weather, you get the damndest noises from bad splices and when the wires are sitting in a puddle of water, snow or ice.  I cannot tell you the number of times I would be out there with a flashlight on a cold, rainy night trying to find the offending splice.

Eventually, we began hitting the telephone installers up for the longest continuous lengths of wire we could bum from them and each time we got a longer chunk, we could take out two or three of the shorter lengths and replace them.  Finally an installer that had our neighborhood as his area, must have gotten tired of all our wire-pan handling and gave us a whole piece of brand new drop wire off a spool.  He even came to our back yard and paced it off so he knew how much to give us.  We were in heaven.  No more noisy line.
-Bill G

Netdewt

I got some 22 gauge wire nuts from the hardware store (smallest they had). So maybe that will work. I think the modular connector in the first spot I want to do has some kind of pressure fitting, not screws (older metal wall plate).

Kenny C

try moving the yellow phone to wall line down one
In memory of
  Marie B.
1926-2010

Netdewt

Quote from: Kennyc1955 on March 16, 2010, 07:09:36 PM
try moving the yellow phone to wall line down one


I actually did that also, since I opened up the screw where the black ringer wire was.

Kenny C

oh ok I can get a pic on here later of how mine is wired
In memory of
  Marie B.
1926-2010