Wiring a 1965 telephone....

[doug]

     Okay. A strange request .... does anyone have the knowledge to rewire a 1965 dial type telephone at the plug-in-the-wall end please?. We have this type of phone we use downstairs ... when we forget to bring down the cordless one from upstairs ... and the one that needs rewiring has a volume control on the headset (which is great for a deaf old person like me) because I cannot hear the present one, which is also a dial type phone. (We got this phone from the GPO a long time ago, as my children are both deaf and they could then use the phone.) The wires at the wall plug end are very fine and I wouldn't tackle it myself because of that.

      So, if anyone can help, it would be appreciated. And thanks.

      Doug.

[Carole]

Is it just the wire that plugs into the phone one end and the wall at the other end Doug, I would have thought these were easy to just replace.  I am sure I heard once that some of the cables we use for our astro kit are the same as a telephone cable, though don't know which ones.

Carole

[ApophisAstros]

Think its the guidescope cable on mine, not certain though.
Not very long.
Roger

[The Thing]

A 1960s phone is hardwired. Telephone engineers had to be called to wire them up. I didn't think pulse dial phones still worked without a gadget to convert to tones these days with digital exchanges.

[MarkS]

A 1960s phone is hardwired. Telephone engineers had to be called to wire them up. I didn't think pulse dial phones still worked without a gadget to convert to tones these days with digital exchanges.

That's right - the old dial phones are not compatible with modern tone dialling.  Modern providers such as TalkTalk & Virgin will only accept tone dialling but older BT lines might still be compatible with the pulse dialling of old style phones.  Conversions to tone dialling can be done by specialised companies.

Mark

[Mac]

Still Lurking.

A 1960s phone is hardwired. Telephone engineers had to be called to wire them up. I didn't think pulse dial phones still worked without a gadget to convert to tones these days with digital exchanges.

That's right - the old dial phones are not compatible with modern tone dialling

Tut Tut,
I love the lack of knowledge here 

All modern telephone exchanges are set up for Tone and pulse dialling,
Very easy to convert your dial phone to modern plug,

Heres one I prepared 20 years ago.......

Plus you can hear the bloody thing ring...





This is for a 732 so might be different for your phone.

Your phone plug will have 4 wires, Red, White, Green and Blue,
I cant remember which wires do what as its been over 20 years since i left BT,
Looking at my old phone which I rewired and is in daily use,
You can see where the 4 coloured wires goto,

From what I remember, you might need to change the links in the back of the phone to match what is in mine,
but before you start take a photo of the link positions just in case nothing works

So red wire goes to Orange,
White to black
Blue to Black ( the other black)
Green doesn't connect to anything.

Mac. (sort of semi retired BT Engineer  )

Just found this as well.

http://www.britishtelephones.com/pstconv1.htm

[Mac]

On another note,

You actually only need two wires,
2 & 5, which is the pair from the exchange and will give you dial tone,
3 is your ring wire, which when ringing is 90 deg out of phase and is used to make the phone (all phones) ring,

So if you run an extension, you just need to connect 2 & 5 and if you want the extensions to ring 3.
most exchanges have a REN Ringing equivalent  number of 4) which means you can have up to 4 extensions RINGING....
You can have as many extensions as you want but only a maximum of 4 can be made to ring.

[doug]

Thanks Mac. It is the wall end of the connecting cable that is dodgy, not the interior wiring. The wires ... for my old eyes... are very small and that is the only bit that needs to be changed. Perhaps cutting off ... shock horror ... the end of the cable, stripping the shielding back, removing the cracked shielding on the very small wires and then rewiring the small plug may do the trick. Your expertise may be needed here ....... I want to use this particular phone again as it has a volume control on the headset and as my hearing ain`t what it was, it works well for me. Very loud ring as well, like yours.

Doug. With thanks.