atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Antique Telephones Western Electric 500 C/D to RJ11 conversion

I bought my wife a Western Electric rotary phone for Christmas and she wants to actually use it as one of our house phones. The phone appears to be in good condition, but the cord has been cut off at the end. I can tell the cord has three conductors (red, yellow, green) and I am wondering what would be the best way to adapt this to an RJ11 connection.
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Change the cord to a modular one.

No, no, no, why make a nice antique worth less? The junk bins are filled with otherwise valuable non-modular phones from the 50's and 60's that have been notched and otherwise butchered.

Strip the black sheathing back an inch or so, and strip the mounting cord leads. The conductors are tinsel, so be careful. Take the red tinsel conductor and wrap it carefully around one screw in the connecting block. Take the green and the yellow tinsel conductors and carefully wrap them, together, around another screw terminal. Then take the red jack lead and match it up with the red cord lead, and tighten the screw. Take the green jack lead and do the same on a screw with the green/yellow leads. Screw the cover down. Use a modular mounting cord to go from this assembly to the wall jack in your house.

I know POTS (a vanishing thing in NY) supports pulse dial but does FIOS. My Vonage ATA does not and my previous Cable Modem did not.

My point is unless you have POTS (plain old telephone service) the phone may not be able to dial out, will still ring and answer fine.

Yes, FiOS will support rotary. I have FiOS at home and have been able to place calls using a 1980s vintage Western Electric 500 telephone. I can also call out when I switch our AT&T/Lucent 962 & 965 telephones from TT to rotary.

Arthur, changing the cord OR installing that piece of crapola on the end of the cord will still devalue the phone.

Go to www.sandman.com/telhist.html and scroll to near the bottom of the page. You want a "Modular Retrofit Plug"

You have several options including purchasing;
insulation piercing, telephone spade-lugs (a) from Rat-Shack and crimping them onto the ends of the cut-off conductors.
Taking a regular modular connector and cutting off the plug on one end and then crimping on the spade-lugs.
Purchasing a half-modular (b) line-cord, i.e., modular plug on one end and spade-lugs on the other.
A simple eBay or Google search will reveal a number of suppliers for these products, including-

(a) https://tinyurl.com/885wjpn
Telephone Spade Lugs (24-Pack), Catalog #: 64-3070, $2.09
(b) https://tinyurl.com/6wmouas or https://tinyurl.com/7hwmh8h
Half-modular Line Cord (Ace Hardware, eBay and other suppliers)
https://tinyurl.com/6tm8f8w
Modular retro-fit phone Plug adapters

Ok, this is my rookie project, but I think I can handle the cord swap out. After cracking the case, I can tell that the cord is not the 1958 original, as the internal wiring has all cloth insulation. If I have a working phone and a happy wife, it'll be worth the $20 I paid for it.

My only question is that since I have a 3 insulator cord, I don't know where to put the black wire. I can easily replace the green, yellow, and red where the existing spade ends are now. (Top right in the below image).

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Thanks for all the help so far.

Insulate & store it.

Thanks, it sounds too easy. I'll put the order in on ebay and hopefully try it out by the end of the week. I can buy a cloth cord later from the sandman website if I want to make it more "authentic".

to the forum!

The cord you have is actually the original cord, made by Western Electric and fitted to the phone by the Bell System installer who installed it. Your phone would not have been installed with a cloth cord.

At the wall end, the cord most likely attached to a small plastic block [about 2" square] known as a 42A block. These can still be found [ask your local phone guy to look in his junk box], and if you can scare one up, it would actually be a quick and easy way to get hooked up.

There is also a series of jacks, also made by WE, that take a "4-Prong" plug. Depending on how old you are, you may remember them as they were still very common 20 years ago. They are also still around, and are a viable option.

Sorry if we sound anal about authenticity [we kind of are]. The flat modular cords just look bogus coming out of a 500 set.

Jim
**************************************************
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

And using a knock out tool to cut the cases to retrofit them for full modular cords is something I wish I could go back and undo.

When you hook up your new modular cord, you'll need to take that black wire on the terminal with the yellow line cord wire (it's going to the ringer), and move it to the terminal that the green line cord wire goes to.

dave, i think i know what you mean, mod to spades, no need to modify the phone, here in the great white north, dave can vouch, we never had modular 500's, they just had silver spade to modular cords put on them

Sorry, Jay, you're wrong. Sherbrooke & Guelph, Ontario were traditionally the test locations for anything new for Bell.

When Bell was testing the "Modular" change, installers were transferred in from all over to blanket each city. Went over well in Sherbrooke, not so well in Ontario. Jacks were installed and cords were changed.

Once the test was complete Bell introduced the "QSQM" designation to phones with a modular cord. For example, a traditional 500 set was "D-500-(colour code)" while the modular equivalent was QSQM 500-(Colour code)".

My point was that the true value for the OP's set would be diminished with whatever conversion made to it.

i meant dave, they were "modular" in the sense they plugged into jacks, but the phones were never full modular like the ones south of the border, the user couldnt change the line or the reciever cord himself. i was a bit un clear.

as for the OP's phone, ive gotten a few like that in my collection, luckily they werent cut off, so i put one of those old 4 pin plugs on it, available at radio shack to this day. i was lucky enough to find sets that still had that little grommet on the end of the wire.

Jeffery C,

Looking at your 500 set again, you might want to give it a little polishing to make it shine! I like to use "Magnolia Glayzit Telephone Refinisher" but perhaps "Armour all" would suffice.

Arthur, your thoughts on this?

Thanks for all the help guys. I swapped out the original cord with a spade to modular connection. I also had to move the black wire from G to L1 to make it ring. I can hold on to the original cord if I want to get more adventurous later, but I really don't have the time or tools to repair the old cord. I know it doesn't have a fully antique feel, but I have a functioning, and apparently indestructible telephone that is worth the $30 I now have invested in the project. More importantly, my wife loves the rotary dial and the way it rings. This was fun.

I'll check my supply and find you a 3-conductor black cord. It may take a while, because I'm lazy.

"...perhaps "Armour all" would suffice. Arthur, your thoughts on this?"


Yes, it works great. We call it Armor All® in this country. In fact, TPC (the phone company) used to stock something called "cleaner and polish" that we were all certain was just Armor All in a Western Electric labeled bottle.

We had something similar in Bell Canada territory. However, it didn't last long because when Northern Electric (Northern Telecom / Nortel)found out, they forced Bell to stop it's use as it caused problems on the repair line.

What, they couldn't get THEIR phones to shine as well as the ARMOR ALL treated phones!