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Metal North Electric Galion

Started by wds, October 21, 2011, 01:35:47 PM

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GG



Paul, why do you think these refurb shops had new housings made for North sets but not for WE 302s and K-1000s?   (AE 41 housings would be too complex, and swapping the internals too time-consuming; SC 1243s being made of metal were indestructible.)  (For that matter, did SC ever make a 1243 desk set in any kind of plastic as they did for the wall set?)

Seems to me that plastic 302 housings got corner cracks often enough, and K-1000 bakelite housings were rather fragile.  The K-1000 housing would be a particularly easy swap: unplug the dial, unscrew the dial and the hookswitch plunger, swap, done, no wiring with spade lugs.

Also seems to me that the population of Norths would have been about the same as Kelloggs and SCs, so it's not like there were so many more of them around to justify it strictly on that basis.  But there would also have been plenty of non-Bell 302s in circulation, maybe as many as Norths anyway.  Given comparable populations of phones to recycle, why did North get copied at least twice?



bingster

Quote from: wds on October 26, 2011, 08:52:06 AM
I looked and looked for that page on your website and couldn't find it - thanks for the link.  I was unable to get the North base to fit on a 302 shell - the ringer got in the way.
I have one of the Norths that were refurbished by Telephone Engineering, and it came with one of the dinky round ringers in place of the standard ringer in a North or Western set.  That's what allows the shell to fit a 302 base without ringer issues.
= DARRIN =



GG



It may also be that the little round bells were an expedient substitute for removed frequency ringers.  But someone here figured out a way to *very* *carefully* cut notches in the metal "reeds" in frequency ringers to loosen them up enough to ring on 20 Hz, so we may have a viable solution to enable keeping those (otherwise pesky and troublesome:-) frequency ringers after all.

LarryInMichigan

I used a rotary tool with a cut-off disc to cut notches into the reed of a 30Hz ringer in my SC 1543 and added another .2μF capacitor , and it now rings loudly enough to scare the neighbors.  With most of the older freq ringers, the reed is very difficult to access, so this method may not be feasible.

Larry

paul-f

Quote from: GG on October 26, 2011, 10:39:58 AM
Paul, why do you think these refurb shops had new housings made for North sets but not for WE 302s and K-1000s?   
  <snip>
Given comparable populations of phones to recycle, why did North get copied at least twice?

My guess is that it had something to do with the number of lawyers employed by the Bell system.   ;) ;)  They had a reputation of vigorously defending the Bell System's intellectual property.

By copying the North housing, copiers were able to produce a housing that independents could use on recycled North or WE 302 bases.
Visit: paul-f.com         WE  500  Design_Line

.

GG



With or w/o the IP lawyers in the mix, one housing that covered two populations of sets would have been a smart move.  This would have been viable even after the consent decree that open-sourced everything coming out of Bell Labs and enabled Kellogg & SC to produce 500s. 

wds

I found one of those "Economy Special" phones on Ebay, so I grabbed it to compare with the real North Galion.  Appears to be a real AE dial, WE base with the smaller ringer so it would fit in the North shell.  The switch is WE, with one of the mounting tabs bent over so it would fit.  The shell has multiple mounting tabs so it will fit the WE base as well as the NE base.  No metal inserts, so they just use sheet metal screws to mount the base to the shell.  Stromberg handset.  The plastic shell seems to be made of softer material than any of my other phones, and there is abnormal wear around the cradel.  Otherwise, for $23 including s/h, I had to have this fake NE.  It's pretty dirty - not sure if I want to even clean it up and put on the shelf with the other phones. 
Dave

Phonesrfun

If it were a dog, it would be Heinz 57.
-Bill G

LarryInMichigan

I saw that on ebay.  I am glad that it went to a good home. 

I have one of those which I bought at an Olson Electronics store (remember them?) in about 1975.  The shell is probably the same.  It is some sort of thick, relatively soft, dull plastic.  The base is a WE 302, but the ringer was missing the gongs.  The dial is a WE #5, and the handset is a North.  Until a couple of years ago when I started buying and learning about antique phones, I had no idea what it was.  I used that phone though my adolescence.

Larry

wds

I couldn't resist cleaning it.  When I took the dial apart, it's an AE dial, but the number plate is a thin metal, and the numbers are a sticker.  Interesting use of spare parts on this phone.
Dave

LarryInMichigan

Quote from: wds on November 23, 2011, 07:01:48 PM
I couldn't resist cleaning it.  When I took the dial apart, it's an AE dial, but the number plate is a thin metal, and the numbers are a sticker.  Interesting use of spare parts on this phone.

Mine has a very worn WE dial plate which had been painted over with a new white background and numbers and letters.  The paint was chipping badly, and I noticed that there were numbers beneath it, so I scraped off all of it.

Larry

GG



That makes two of us who had North Electric sets on our desks when we were teenagers.  Mine was also something of a mongrel, at least as far as having an AE dial.

Question: Every North set I've seen, the base feet have gone hard as concrete.  Anyone know how to get them softened up again so they won't scratch table tops? (If there's no way to do that, then one can always put the phone on a mouse pad.)