Merritt, most of my family won't even touch the phones when they do ring! My mother will usually answer the phone if she knows who's calling and has occasionally used them to call me in another part of the house. The reactions from the rest of the people who know about my phone hobby range from "I don't get it" to "You're f'd up!"
This obsession started when I was around 14. My mother's office building had two sections, and the tenant in the other section had moved out. My mother's company was going to expand into the now empty space. They had me doing work around there for a few months by that time, changing light bulbs, fixing little things here and there, and working on their phone system. I don't even remember what kind it was, but what I do remember is when the tenant moved out and they asked my to extend their phone system into the new space, I discovered the tenant had left their KSU in the utility closet. I promptly removed it, ran the lines for the other system and programmed the new phones. It was a pretty basic analog system my mother's company had.
Anyway, I got this KSU home and looked it over. It was a Panasonic Easa-phone, 2 lines and 8 stations. Really basic, but to a 14 year old, it might as well been made of solid gold. I got in touch with the business that had left it behind and they were more than happy to give me the phones that went with it. I quickly installed it in our house, with stations in all the important places, kitchen, bedrooms, living room, and of course my tree-house. Back then I was the coolest kid on the street with a phone in my tree house. -No cell phones in those days- It was a thing from there on out. I had a Merlin 410, some old executone that needed 25 pair, but wasn't 1A2, an old econo-key, another panasonic, and finally the Partner. All my life I wanted a 1A2 system, not even knowing what it was called. As a kid, I used to call them "amphenol phones" because that's what was on all the plugs that were left everywhere. I knew what they were, and basically what they looked like, but could never get my hands on any.
Many years passed, and I was searching Craigslist for old phone stuff and I picked up a single 2564 set from a guy that was N.O.S. and that's all she wrote. This was the newer style with the dumb LED line lights, but I didn't care, now I was on a mission for a KSU. Shortly after getting the Partner, I found this forum. I started reading the threads, my appetite insatiable. Without this forum, I would have had a hell of a time hooking up the 1A2 stuff. Not to mention I'd probably still not know what they were called. I still reread the posts in the 1A2 section all the time.
Last edited by ChrisRR; 01/19/16 12:15 PM.
