Japanese Rotary Phone

[McHeath]

A refurbishment would make sense, explain that more modern looking circuit board.

[mienaichizu]

that also makes sense because of the modern looking circuit board

[LM Ericsson]

The sticker on the bottom indicates that it is a model 601a1

[GG]

I was thinking of reviving this topic; good to see someone else did so first.

Yes, NTT 600 sets (and 601s) look a bit like Kellogg 1000s. I noticed that too the first time I saw one.   Radio Snack sold 600s in the US with *straight* handset cords in the early 70s.  These were made by Toshiba, whose name appears subtly in the plastic in the interior of the handset, under either the transmitter or the receiver.  Others found their way into the US via the interconnect industry and via phone shops.  The most-recent versions of these had two-piece handset handles with the usual screw-on caps. 

The hookswitch mechanism on 600s is attached inside the housing, similarly to a WE 302.  I was intrigued to see your 601 has the hookswitch mounted on the circuit board on the base. 

The "ringer" you have there is a chime ringer, that uses the two flat chime pieces instead of bells.  IMHO those have a wonderful sound.  The same ringer is used on what I call the 2nd generation of NTT touchtone sets.  (The 1st generation of NTT touchtone sets used regular bells same as the early 600 rotary sets.)   

I found a bunch of both generations of NTT touchtone sets at a flea market for like $10 a piece about 25 years ago.   The 1st generation has the interesting problem that the housings apparently shrink or something, so they don't quite fit onto the bases correctly.   And the 2nd generation, when used on US central office lines, has very very low sidetone, about the same as a single-slot WE rotary payphone on a coin trunk.  (However I would bet that on a PBX, the sidetone is normal.)

The dials on those NTT 600s and 601s use the "Western Electric" method of a helical spring clutch and a flywheel governor, which is an interesting change from the almost identically AE-like dials used on the Japanese #4 sets. 

[AE_Collector]

I was thinking of reviving this topic; good to see someone else did so first.

I think threads should be "Revived" a lot more than they are. What I am trying to say is that I don't really agree with the warning that comes up when you try to post to a thread that is older than (is it 90 days?). The first time I saw that I decided not to revive the topic. Now I believe that the best thing is to add to existing topics rather than creating a new topic that is likely very similar to an older existing one.

Sorry to change the topic of this topic!

Terry

[Owain]

Curious about that circuit board.  It looks awfully modern for 1963, were such boards being made then?  I just pulled the back off my 1964 RCA clock radio on my desk to compare, and it's circuit board is far more primitive looking, with big honking resistors and big gloppy solder traces and everything is big. 

The GPO Tele 706 in 1959 was developed in two versions, conventional wiring and printed circuit wiring.

I'm quite prepared to believe Japan was a bit ahead of the UK in adopting printed circuit wiring.

The Siemens Centenary Neophone was the first telephone to have printed circuit wiring and I think that dates from 1954.

[LM Ericsson]

I have one of those sets, but not a NEC or NTT. It is one of those sets I think were for use in America, the Toshiba sets. I think they were manufactured for Archer.

[Adam]

I think they were manufactured by Archer.

Is it possible you meant they were manufactured FOR Archer?  As far as I remember, Archer was a brand name that was used by and sold at Radio Shack in the US in the sixties and seventies.

[paul-f]

I agree, Adam.

Archer was a common brand name for stuff made for Radio Shack.  Here are some boxes showing the name used on repackaged European phones that were sold for a few years.

[Adam]

And look what I just found in the online Radio Shack catalogue for 1973!

I think the "Cinderella" phone was the Japanese version too, wasn't it?

[GG]

L.M.Ericsson - yes, that's the phone.  If you unscrew the receiver and transmitter caps and look at the back of the handset shell behind the receiver and transmitter, you should see the name "Toshiba" molded into the plastic in very small cursive script at one end or the other.  I think it was at the receiver end.  I vaguely recall also seeing "Toshiba" molded into the underside of the housing somewhere near the hookswitch.

A number of manufacturers produced these 600/601 sets.  Very often they used common parts, for example a company with the initials NYC produced the receivers and transmitters for a lot of them, and Taiko produced dials for a lot of them. 

Thus it would have been simple for Radio Snack to contract with one of them for a supply of these to import into the US. 

The fact that they chose one with a straight handset cord is very interesting; the only other major producers that were using straight handset cords in the early 70s where the Italian manufacturers AUSO (Siemens) and FATME (Ericsson) and FACE Standard (ITT), for the Italian PTT. 

And yes, the Cinderella was the Japanese version of the Princess, also produced by more than one manufacturer.  These were available in other places in addition to Radio Snack, with polished brass dial fingerwheels and with clear plastic fingerwheels depending on which version and where you got it.

Meanwhile Lafayette Radio at about that time, was importing their competing sets from Tesla in Czechoslovakia.  The Americanized Tesla is known by the alphanumeric dial numberplate below the fingerwheel, whereas the Czech version is numeric only. 

Radio Snack's Toshibas have very high sidetone on Panasonic PBXs, similar to a Western Electric J/K 500 (unregulated network), and no external ringer volume control.  The Teslas often have scratchy transmitters due to a mismatch between European and American transmitter specs (if I'm not mistaken, Europe used higher voltage and lower current), and though they do have a ringer volume control, it's not as smooth as on a WE C4A and sounds like a buzzer at its lower end. 

So you could buy those and secretly install them in your house and hope you didn't get caught (as they were not-quite-legal back then), and be very happy with not paying the monthly rental fee for a Western Electric 500 ....and yet there was always "something" about those competing phones, that was a noticeable minor shortcoming compared to a Western Electric 500.  Yet in those days 500s were quasi-contraband, like Cuban cigars:  "Psst! Hey look what we got past the embargo!"