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Northern Electric N20-UN Candlestick

Started by NorthernElectric, April 10, 2022, 06:14:42 PM

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NorthernElectric

#15
Quote from: TelePlay on April 27, 2022, 09:54:39 PMDid you find a dial mainspring?

Not yet, but I have made some progress.  I may have located a couple of AE dials that might have springs I could use.  It will likely be a few weeks before I can see them in person.  In the meantime, I found an incomplete later vintage AE dial that I had forgotten I had in a parts box so I am planning to pull the spring out of it and see if the ends can be bent to the right shape to work in my dial per Larry's idea.

I have disassembled the phone to make sure the original spring hadn't simply popped off and become lodged up inside out of sight.  When I reassembled it, I wired it up to bypass the dial and try it out.  This took some doing and a little trial and error because it's unlike any of my other candlestick phones.  In the end, I relied entirely on the wiring diagram that came with it and stopped trying to use phone/subset wiring schemes for other phones.

It has a DC receiver wired in series with the transmitter.  The hookswitch has 3 contacts.  The center contact makes with one side when the receiver is off hook and the other side when it's on.  I suspect the latter is used to disconnect the ringer when the receiver is off hook to prevent the bells tinkling when dialing, but I only have the wiring diagram for the phone itself and not one that shows it connected to a subset.  So I didn't connect that hookswitch contact for my test using only 2 wires connecting to L1 and L2 in my subset as per the diagram.

For my test, I connected it to my asterisk box.  I dialed it from my SIP phone and answered it.  Then I dialed another extension using the hookswitch and let it go to voicemail.  It worked just fine.

Cliff

Stubbypylon

Great find!  I did the same thing when I found mine. Drove 3 hours in the worst snow storm but it was worth it.  Send your dial to Jeff Lamb in Kingston.  He repairs these all the time and he probably has parts.  He does excellent work!
Craig Stanowski

Stubbypylon

Also I've seen more nickel 20UN's than black 20UN's.  The subsets are hard to find for these.  They're N295E's.
Craig Stanowski

NorthernElectric

Thanks Craig.

I've got 2 295's (in my storage locker at the moment) and I think a 3rd on the way but I don't think any are the 295E variant like yours.  They all have a bit taller box and open from the other side.

Does yours have a wiring diagram for the 20-UN inside the door that you could post a photo of?

I've been thinking of sending the dial to Jeff if I get stuck but he hasn't been on here in a while.  I wondered if he's gone to one of the Canadian facebook forums.  I set up a facebook account and asked to join those but before I got approved facebook disabled my account.  Seems only cell phone users are welcome on facebook and I can't get in unless I give them a mobile number.
Cliff

Stubbypylon

Cliff, there's no wiring diagram inside the 295E.  I'll message you Jeff's contact info.  He is active on a few of the Facebook pages.
Craig Stanowski

NorthernElectric

Thanks Craig.  The interior view helps.  It looks like just a ringer with an extra terminal.  I think I can rig that circuit up up with an N43AB extension ringer by adding an extra terminal and use that until I find a real one.
Cliff