atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems 760A Loudspeaker

Well, my 760A speaker has arrived. Some of you might have seen it on e-pay. It was (is) filthy. The good news is that the butchery done to it was a lot less obnoxious than I thought that it would be. Before I go on, here is the silly thing before I did anything to it.









It was not obvious on the e-pay description that there was a stub of the original wire left. I had wrongly assumed that there had been a hole drilled underneath the four prong plug that had been screwed onto the side of the unit to pass the connecting wires through. Thankfully I was wrong, and there were only two very small little holes where the sheet metal screws had been driven through the plastic. Unfortunately, the force on the plastic from said sheet metal screws has deformed the plastic somewhat.

Any way, here is an image of the unit after I removed the plug.





Notice the discoloration of the plastic shell. I am guessing that this is due to very long term exposure to either sunlight or flourescent light as well as environmental grundge (in this case, I believe it was a mix of smoke and auto shop grease.

After this, I took the shell off of the unit. It seems that this unit was either orignially not an amplified unit, or that at some time in its life, someone removed the amplifier. There are two extra tiny threaded screw holes in the base of the unit where a printed circuit card could have been mounted. However, the green wire stub that is attached to the speaker only has two wires in it... red and green. This makes me think that this was originally built or installed as a passive speaker with the amplification done in another piece of equipment.

Here are a couple of shots of the inside of the unit.





Since the screw holes are so small, rather than making a chemically soften mush of green plastic to attempt to fill the holes, I took tiny shards of green plastic from the shattered shell of an old 500 set and carefully jammed into the screw holes. I stuffed as much into the holes as I could using a pair of tweezers. Then I liberally applied drops of cyanoacrylic glue to the holes and shards in an attempt to weld the shards to the plastic shell. This technique worked in the past for me when I repaired a cracked keyset shell. I am letting the speaker shell sit over night to let the glue and plastic harden, then I will if necessary, take some green plastic dust, mix with more cyanoacrylic and cover any little voids that might be left.

Then I will start the restoration of the shell with a vigourous cleaning via the dishwasher, then the usual sanding/polishing process. (the unit is deeply scratched.)

I will have more photos tomorrow evening. In the mean time, does anyone know where I might find a green two wire cable for this thing?

Also, can anyone tell me if the aluminum grile is supposed to be a matt finish or is it supposed to be shiny?

Thanks again!

Joe