atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Buttset questions

Hi (again)

I have a Western Electric rotary buttset in Orange. It has a strange leed setup, and since a photo is worth a thousand words, I will let the photo speak for itself.



The connector has two very tiny lugs on them (even though they look like plugs in the photo, the are actually lugs). About a foot or so from the buttset is a connector that will connect the buttset to the leeds.

My questions are thus:

first, is the connector a WECO product or did somebody 'customize' this?

Second, it would be nice to use this with my phone endevors, but it is sorta hard to use tiny lugs on punchdown blocks or screw terminal blocks. Were there special aligator clips that were attached using the lugs?

Third, I have heard, but do not know the truth of the matter about buttset color. I have the orange one, but I have seen blue and yellow as well. Was this for the tech's preference or was there a color code as to useage?

I like the old Weco stuff, even though I will probably get myself a modern Fluke unit (the low end one that is only for POTS lines), but it will be TT capable. However, for the "phone barn" museum and working on dial switches etc, I will use the Weco rotary sets to keep in character, if you will.

Best,

Joe

Joe, nice find!! The cord on that buttset is what is known as a CO [Central Office] cord. The plug/jack assembly near the bottom of the buttset allowed switching the "business end" of the cord for different uses: there were plugs/clips/what-have-you that would connect directly to a main distribution frame and/or CO protector block [usually on the MDF], there were cords for ground-start line testing, there were even cords with the 310 plug we were talking about earlier.

Surf on over to Aines to see all the different kinds of cords. They also have the "bed-of-nails" clips that a typical field buttset would have, if you want to convert your set.

I'll leave the color question to someone else, I too would like to hear the "inside dope" on that.

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

It's a model 1014. The field one without the interchangeable cords was the 1013. The two little lugs were used to attach the leads to a 310-type plug. I can send you a plug that will work on it.

The orange test sets were the last of the four colors to emerge. The first ones were dark blue, then a lighter blue, for field work. The yellow ones were for CO/PBX work, and generally had the plug/connector as yours does. Then the last ones were orange for either application.

The real early ones had two distinguishing features: A TALK/MONITOR switch that was concave, instead of convex. It was almost impossible to operate with a gloved hand. The other feature was a thumb warmer in the guise of a large wire-wound resistor in the talk circuit that would overheat and melt the plastic switch handle.

Back in the wacky 1970's when they were first introduced, guys would take two sets and marry dissimilar colored halves to make a psychedelic version.

Hi Arthur,

That would be very cool! I even have the screwdriver for the hole in the head screws! (My type of fastener... hole in the head)

I will PM later tonight.

Thanks,

Joe

Arthur your last comment made me think of when I was at GTE, or then it was General Telephone. They would have a sales contest. we had one guy that would always win. He would sell more than all of us combined. I started to see why, we had the Automatic Electric styleline and it came in a bunch of 70s colors. he was mix matching them and calling them the tootey fruity Phone, electric blue base, pink rtl. cd candy apple red handset, orange line cd. We didn't have a chance!

GeeRay, I worked for a Code-A-Phone dealer from 1973-89. We took a bunch of telco only CAP's in trade, for 1500's, that were built using a proprietary tape drive and electronics + a trimline handset, and a base less it's cover. The base mounted inside the CAP housing and the top on the left side was trimline base cover shaped. Any how, I latched onto a pile of them, they were headed for the dumpster, and ordered base covers and handset backs from North Supply. 'Ice cream sandwich' had a brown base cover, white handset face and brown handset back. And the green, yellow, and blue became other weird combos. Sold like hotcakes at my 'garage sales'!

The "ice cream sandwich" that sounds like a classic. Now days you can have it in black or black.

I have one of those old black butt sets in the closet somewhere. My dad gave it to me when he retired. It had the little points on the rotary dial, and you pretty much had to use a pick to dial the damn thing. Alas, the rotary only feature made it pretty unusable for anything more than a antique.

Same here, Zane.

"pencil dial" , Ive got a couple of them around I liked them becouse they where lighter and more compact than the BECOS I was using pre ts-21