Questions from a Yard Sale Find

[bake114]

Yard sale buy. I have a few 500s but this is my first really old phone related purchase. An old 43 F ringer or subset. (I'm unsure of the proper term.) It needs a little work but from pictures I have found of others on the forum, it look complete.

What years did they produce these? What would be the appropriate phone to go with this ringer?

Any info is appreciated. I know absolutely nothing about this ringer.

I hope it is worth the $4 I spent.

[Phonesrfun]

We had a small discussion about the 43F a week or two ago.  It is a stand-alone ringer only that was made for local battery/magneto service.  It is an unbiased ringer that would need an external capacitor in series to be used on today's phone lines.

They are a ringer only, and don't contain an induction coil, so it cannot be used as a subset.

They are cool looking, and were perhaps in service from the turn of the century (1900) and later until taken out of service, presumably as a result of a conversion to common battery service.

[Phonesrfun]

Oh, by the way, welcome to the forum, and your ringer is nice and clean inside.

[bake114]

Thanks for the welcome and info. I have been lurking for a while and working on some 500s. When I saw this I figured what the heck.

If I wanted a phone to go with this what model should I search for?

[Phonesrfun]

probably western Electric 317 magneto wall phone, but you would not be able to use a 317 on a Lmodern phone line without some work/ modification or making an adapter.

Really, though, any local battery type phone of any make would be a good go-with.

[dsk]

Hi and Welcome.
The nice ringer box could be put up as a spare ringer to any telephone. Traditionally the ringer was put up in a room from where you could hear it in all other rooms, e.g. near the stairs.

Put your ringer up were you want it, find some wire from that time, or at least some old looking wire and wire it up. One place on the run you may change to modern cord, here is a suitable location to put in series a bipolar capacitor rated at 200v or more, any value between 0.5 and 1 μF should be OK.

What telephone you use together with it may depend on what you find, "The ringer may just have survived from earlier days".

dsk