Western Electric 500 Dial Telephone

© Brooke Clarke 2013

Background

This WE Model 500 (Wiki) telephone came after the WE302 and was replaced by the WE2500 Touch Tone telephone.  The 500 ringer is the basis for the Ring Equivalence Number (Wiki: REN).  The handset has a flat back unlike the pointed back on the WE 302 handset that made it impossible to hold it between your ear and shoulder.

The WE 500 is the same as the Bell System 500 telephone.

Problems as Received

• The coiled line cord is terminated in spade lugs so to get to a modular plug I attached a wall plate RJ-11 socket to the phone and plugged in a standard modular line cord.
  
• When dialing 9 to get an outside line on the Panasonic KX-TA824 telephone system the dial works, but when dialing low numbers like 1 it's way too slow and does not work. 
  Needs repair.
  
• The ringer is not working.  Maybe because of wiring or maybe because the tension spring is out of the adjustment sheet metal part.
  A quick check with the KS-8455L2 shows no capacitor across the red & green line wires so the ringer probably has been disconnected (this was commonly done so that "the phone company" would not see you had extra phones).  Moving the black wire from network  terminal G to network terminal L1 enablew the ringer with the tension spring is in the weak position.
  

Photos

Fig 1	Fig 2	Fig 3
Fig 4	Fig 5	Fig 6

Related

Phones
Western Electric 202 Dial phone
Bell System 302 Dial Phone
Bell System 500 Dial Phone
Bell system 2500 Touch Tone phone 
Western Electric 2554 Wall Touch Tone Telephone
Western Electric Candlestick Dial Telephone
Panasonic KX-TA824 Small Business Phone System (PBX)
VOIP Voice Over Internet Protocol

Links

Back to Brooke's PRC68, Alphanumeric Index to all of Brooke's web pages,  Products for Sale, page

Page created 19 Feb 2013.