Phone wiring polarity question

[Paintedcow]

On a single home landline:

My landline phone quit working this weekend. I knew I'd not get repair service until Monday. I opened the connection box outside and found a broken wire. Then another one broke while I was working in there. So I took off all the wires, restripped them all, and started over with "fresh" wires. The source wires are both black. and I had them off the main connection box outside. I did not label them (probably should have).

How do you know which source wire should go to the red and which should go to the green (on the house wires)? I put these colored ones to the same screws that they were originally, but I could have reversed the black (source) wires....

Or dont it matter?????

The phones do work, and so does my internet, so either I guessed right, or it works either way !

[Micky]

It used to be that touchtone phones wouldn't dial if you reversed red and green, but they fixed that 20 or 30 years ago. I think the fix was retroactive, that is, it made old phones work backwards too.

How many phone lines do you have in your house? Any other phone company lines?

If only one line, you only need two wires.

My friend in a NJ suburb of NYC bought a house built in the 20's or

40's or so, and it only had 3 phone wires coming into it. Even though only 2 are needed, TPC always installs more than needed. Perhaps 3 seemed like a lot when the house was built.

[Stormin Mormon]

Use a test set to check from each wire to ground. Red has the signal, green does not.

[danny burstein]

FYI, Mike Sandman died in a plane crash earier this year.

[clare]

Some phones are fussy which way they are wired,others are not.

If I remember correctly old dial phones were polarity sensitive for the ringers.

[gfretwell]

The old (heavy) phones were polarity sensitive on the touch tone dialer power supply. Newer (all electronic) phones don't care. The ringer deal (3 wire "JK" station wire) used the green and yellow for selective ringing on party lines. If you did not have a party line you connected them together. Once joined, a rotary dial phone would work wired either way. I still have several Western Electric phones here and they will never die (from lightning etc)

[Micky]

Absolutely. I only have one, but it rings and works as well as it did

50 years ago, with better sound than most newer phones.

I have another phone that's older, which is in the living room, where I could never run a phone line. It has a bottom like half a grapefruit with the dome on top, with a cradle above that. I don't know the name for that style.

Paid 99 cents for it at Olson's on Western Avenue in Chicago, right across the street from Allied Radio, in 1967. The handset was 15 cents.

[Art Todesco]

Boy, you bring back memories. I forgot all about Olson's. In the 60s I went to Allied quite often for electronic stuff. Allied went through a lot of expansion through those years and eventually, to almost nothing. I think a lot had to do with the Tandy/Radio Shack/Allied merger/buyout/etc. Both were great places. Also, Newark was good too. Remember Lafayette Radio?

[Micky]

I don't think I knew Newark.

I bought things from Lafayette. Maybe a vom that I still have, of course. (If I ever had it I probably still have it.) Grey and wider than tall.

One time they had a tube tester for half price, but it had no manual. Without the settings for each kind of tube, it's worthless. I asked if they could get me the manual and the guy at the store (on Union Square in NYC I think) said yes. Months went by. I called, I wrote, I was considering going to their main store in Farmingdale? Long Island and picketing out front. Then after about 6 months, it came in the mail. I thought it would be photocopy, but it was an original, with an original plastic coil binding. (I still have all that too.)

[Wade Garrett]

Yup, had a Lafayette AM/FM receiver-- one of the first transistorized models. I bought it because Consumer Reports gave it pretty good marks plus I lived only a few miles from Lafayette HQ on Long Island. Thing only lasted a year or two though before it died.

[gfretwell]

Newark is still around as a web operation

[Don Wiss]

I had their catalog. I bought from them.

Absolutely. There was one in Newark, NJ. I still have a chassis punch set from them. I see it has value (like $30). Someday I need to list it on eBay.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[gfretwell]

I will send you $30 right now.