Info about my phone find.. Tandy Radio Shack Archer Princess Rotary Phone

[threefelines]

I found this phone at an estate sale.
I can't seem to find any thing on google or otherwise that matches this phone.
It's an Archer phone, made in Japan for Radio Shack, a Tandy Corp. Co.
Princess style, rotary. It has a little different front to it than others I'm able to find.
Anybody know more ?
Thanks!
I'm new here 

[WesternElectricBen]

Welcome!
Yes, I have a PTT wich may have been sold by Radio Shack under the archer name. I'm guessing your phone is from the early 70's because they fazed out 4 prong plugs in 74... (well I think, atlest)

Ben

[rdelius]

Radio Shack sold telephones for years before it was legal to install them on Bell lines.Sometimes the 4 prong plug was included with the telephone  but you had to wire it on yourself. I think that set was made by Hitachi but not sure. Radio shack sold the Dutch sets,Refurbished us built sets with no ringers,some English and Japanese 2 tone colored sets (deluxe).They  might have imported some Northern Telecom 500 sets custom marked.

[poplar1]

Some of the refurbished phones at Radio Shack came from Bohnsack Equipment Co. in Germantown NY and Hallmark House in Springfield, MA.

The ones I worked on at Hallmark House, when Radio Shack was our only customer, had straight line ringers or buzzers we made from one ringer coil and the metal bands used in shipping.

The Hallmark House phones without ringers were sometimes stamped "buzzer" or they had a label stating something like, "Due to the different voltages [sic] used by different telephone companies, this phone does not contain a ringer." We didn't ship any without a ringer or buzzer while I worked there. I think these without ringers or buzzers were sold before Merrill figured out how to make buzzers. The buzzers we installed were to replace frequency ringers in AE 40s, WE 251s, SC 1243s, North 6H6s, etc. We didn't sell any AE 34s or Kellogg 1000s. The color phones and AE pay phones were sold wholesale to Warren Bohnsack. We recycled the brass gongs from frequency ringers.

[threefelines]

Thanks for the input on my phone here!  It's been real hard to find much about it. Is it somewhat rare do you think? It has this bottom that's like chalk or something so it doesn't slip on the table.  I wish I could find out if it works but with the 4 prong I guess I can't.. unless I dismantle that and "revise" it.

[LarryInMichigan]

The phone is not rare, nor is it particularly valuable, but it's not a bad looking phone.  You can buy adapters which will accept the four-prong plug and provide a modular connector, or you can do the cheap and easy thing that I do.  Buy a cheap modular phone jack at a dollar store, remove the four-prong plug from the phone cord, and connect the wires from the cord to the red and green terminals in the jack.  Then use a cord with modular connectors on both ends between your new jack and a working phone jack in your house.

Larry

[threefelines]

Thanks Larry. I think I'll do what you recommend and keep the phone. It's similar to one I had as a teen 

[twocvbloke]

I was looking at one of these not too long ago, on ebay I think, though it wasn't branded with the same name, but I think they're neat looking phones, certainly a different style to anything we had over here (nearest thing would have been the Trimphone I guess) at the same time they were new...

[poplar1]

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

[LarryInMichigan]

I have seen these phones with all sorts of brand names.  I have never seen one in person, but I would expect that the internal parts are mostly the same as the Japanese type 600 phones.

Larry