Harvest Gold colored ITT 500 with rural dial and M-Type ringer!?!?

[zuperdee]

Hello all,

I just received a Harvest Gold-colored 500 with a rural dial face. I thought it was an ITT 500, but it looks like it is merely a mid-70's ITT 500 housing, handset, and dial face that have been mounted to a similar vintage Stromberg-Carlson base, with a S-C printed circuit network that seems to have broken out of its plastic frame.

Most interesting is that it looks like someone put an M-Type ringer in this phone, and did a very poor job of it at that--there is only a single rivet holding it, and it is very loose, so the ringer just flops around very loosely as a result.

I know that many independent phone companies cobbled sets together from different brands of parts this way, but I have such a hard time believing any phone company concerned about its reputation would ever do such an amateurish job!

I have a feeling though that M-Type ringers in 500-style bodies is not that uncommon either, because later Comdial bases even have special provisions for M-type ringers in them. Why would anyone want an M-type ringer in a 500-style body though???

Anyway, I am wondering if anyone has any opinions on this set--should I try to replace the M-type ringer with a proper C-type ringer, or should I leave the M-type ringer, and maybe try to fix it up a little? I prefer authentic sets, but at the same time, I sometimes feel like even cobbled sets have their stories to tell of phone history.

I am also wondering what the value of this set is--it's not a super authentic, super old beauty or anything, but at the same time, I understand that rural dials on 500 sets are supposedly somewhat rare.

[foots]

  On nod WE phones, I don't think the rural dial plates are very rare. I have seen several ITT and Stromberg-Carlsons with them. As a matter of fact, I have a red SC500 with the rural dial plate, which I got for free.

[zuperdee]

Oh wow, I bet that red S-C 500 is a beauty! I still need a red phone in my collection. Ideally, I'd like a no-dial 500 model bat phone. (I have a cherry red ITT blank, so ideally, if I could find a cherry red ITT someplace that has a bad dial...)

So far, I've got 3 rural dial faces: One black W.E. 500 Signal Corps, one black AE-80, and now this harvest gold-colored cobbled set.

So does anyone out there have any C-Type ringer screws, and a good S-C printed circuit board?

Better yet, does anyone have a 1975 ITT base with a housing in need of replacement?

[Kenny C]

I have a yellow 75 ITT