Western Electric 1554B arrives

[McHeath]

My moss green 1554B came today, seems like a long wait just for shipping from Michigan but here we are.  I paid $49.99 and with shipping it was 64 clams. 

Here is the wrapping job:

[McHeath]

It was well wrapped, each part separate and you can see the nice large box.  The guy sells a lot of phones so I guess he knows what he's doing.  Nothing was damaged.

It is in even better condition than I hoped for:

[Dennis Markham]

Heath, if you don't mind saying, what is the seller's name?

[McHeath]

The seller was not pulling my leg when he said it was near mint, it is.  The cord had a kink, and that was pretty much it, no fading, no smoke smell, no corrosion of any sort, inside and out it looks like it was hardly used.  Even the case hardly has any scratches.  

You can see the odd mounting plate that it came with.  It won't be of any help to me as it does not work with a modular wall jack, I will have to get a modular backplate.  

[McHeath]

The seller is Max Ratner of phonesnthings.com.  He has other nice and shiny stuff on E-Bay from time to time.

Here are the inner works, very clean.

The dates range from 1965 to 12-1967.  Handset is 65, cord is 66, shell is 65, network is 12-67, transmitter and receiver are 66, dial is 67.  There is no refurb date, nor any sign that it was ever back in the factory so I'm guessing the odd 2 year date range is original.  I was reading in Bell Magazine recently that they phased in touch tone phones very slowly, with only 750,000 made by the end of 1965. The article indicated that service was spotty and only in a few locations and that they hoped by the end of the decade to have wider coverage. 

[Phonesrfun]

Wow, you could eat off the insides of that one.  Great find. 

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice phone Heath.  I'm glad it arrived safely.  It's nice to see a nice packing job.

[McHeath]

I'm going to give it a polish and wax and that's all it will need.  It's by far the nicest phone I've bought off E-Bay, only the phones I've bought from the Ericofone web site have been cleaner.  The back has the Bell System Property Not For Sale motto stamped into it, yet the date is 12-67, so as usual there are no hard and fast dates for when one thing was started and another stopped with Ma Bell's production.

It rings and works well, good sound quality.  And that early P series ringer with the brass gong and clapper is very sweet sounding, I like it much better than the later plastic clapper and aluminum gong P ringers.  

It's also interesting how long the arms are on the chrome hook, they really reach out and touch someone.  Those got cut back significantly on the later plastic hooks, and the current clear lucite hooks on Cortelco 2554s are even shorter and thinner.  

[Phonesrfun]

A collector in SLC, Utah named Vern P is looking for an ivory 1554 to complete his color series.  I think ivory was rare in the 1554 line-up.

[Dan]

That's a gorgeous phone Heath. I love the rarity of the 10 buttons. I don't have a wall version yet.

[Dennis Markham]

Heath, a few days ago you were talking about the modular back plate.  I sent you a link to a sliding modular plug that might fit on the plate on your phone.  Did you see that?  Is it the right one?  Perhaps all you need is that sliding plug and you can attach it to the plate that is on the phone now.

[McHeath]

Yes I saw that link and thanks for it Dennis.  Sadly it won't work on this phone, the hole in the back seems to be for connecting a hardwire to the phone, and there are no holes on the back that line up with a modular wall plate.  I thought about cutting a couple of holes, and all that, but figured that I should leave well enough alone and just get a plate.

They have the plates here for 10 dollars:

http://www.oldphones.com/servlet/Categories?category=PARTS%3AModular+jacks

Wouldn't that be funny for ivory to be the rare color in these?  It's so common in 500s and 554s and 2500s as to be boring, I've passed up a lot of ivory phones over the last year.  But then I've never seen an ivory 1554.

[Dennis Markham]

Thanks for that info Heath.  $10 isn't bad for that plate.

[McHeath]

I got to thinking about making my own backplate.  A while back I bought a 2554 at a junk store for a few bucks, it's a late 80's Radio Shack model, and it works and all, but I've been using it for parts.  I figure I can make it into a backplate, remove all the works, remove all the rivets that hold the brackets and such on, and attach it with some bolts into the mount holes on the back of the 1554.

Of course it's not as nice as the factory made plate, but it's handy and cheap, and I like handy and cheap.

[McHeath]

One other thing, the frame for this phone is not anodized metal with that gold color finish we all know and love, or not, but is instead chromed.  Is that normal for early 1554s?  It has not a bit of corrosion on it.