OK, I think I understand that now. I thought that a 3-way might be two wires going in and one the same and one different going out.
In our case we have two cables, according to the phone guy.
See if this sig is OK, I added a space after the dashes.
We have a cordless, but I don't like cordless phones (poor sound quality, etc, etc, etc).
Thanks to everyone who replied. Although some of the discussion was over my head, I learned enough to get the much-needed kitchen wall phone/answering machine working again. I know what to do to try to get the others back, if needed.
That did the trick!
If you look at the old model 500 desk sets you will find that some had a grove in the top of one of the switch hook buttons. That was to allow you to pull the button up further than the spring would move it when the handset was lifted off of the cradle. Pulling up on the switch hook buttons of a properly configured telephone would disconnect the pair from all other extension telephones on the premise to assure the users privacy. The switch hook button was used to do this so that the switch would not remain open after the completion of the call. Hanging up the phone would reset the special switch to normal. Since the phones of that era were hard wired to the pair there was no possibility of disabling the line by unplugging the telephone. With the advent of modular plugs the use of such a phone required the installation of an RJ31X jack so that if the instrument was unplugged the continuity of the line was kept intact by shorting bars built into the jack.
I haven't noticed a quality problem in recent phones, unless you do something like get on the other side of a large metal object from the base on get too close to the limit of its range (normally considerably less than claimed).
They're always cutting out or sound like you are in a barrel, etc. At least the ones I've tried to use.
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