I have a model 554 A/B Western Electric phone that I rewired to work on todays phone lines. The phone rings and I can talk on the phone but I can't dial a number. The dialer works but I can hear a dial tone in the background and eventually I get the automated message from the operator...(if you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again). The phone company says that it should work. I am wondering if there could be a short in one of the wires. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Frank

 

you shouldn't have had to rewire it to work on todays phone line it should have worked as is.

what type of phone line do you have ?

Im not sure pulse dialing will work on VOIP lines if thats what you have .

if not could be a bad dial or could be your "rewire job "

what exactly did yo do ?

if you have another phone you could switch it to P for pulse and see if it dials

 

Thanks for replying mango man...When I received the phone the wires were disconnected so I "Googled" some websites to find out how to wire the phone. I have digital phone and have contacted the phone Co. who said the phone should work fine. Do you know of any tests I could do to test the dial function? Thanks for any suggestions. Frank

 

The rotary dial makes pulses on the line, approx as a hoockflash, but shorter.
The dial wil give 10 pulses at 0, 9 at 9 etc.
10 pulses within 1 second, so if the dial uses approx 1-1.2 sec of returning this shold work well. You may test with hoocking up the telephone on a battery, and a lamp.
The lamp shall glow when you go online, and shine bright when you turn the dial, on return the lamp sahll give ten dark signals. You may let it return slower to observate.

Not all modern exchanges accsept pulse dial. DSL usually not.

dsk

 

Say what?

The phone has got to be wired correctly first. Need to get the phone hooked up correctly before trying any of this.

 

dsk is right , pulse dialing is just make and break similar to series of very short flashs

if the phone wont break dial tone it could be wired wrong but more likely its a bad dial

how much wiring did you do ?

as I recall it is possible to wire the dial incorrectly that will result in what your reporting

should have been just a matter of hooking two wires to the network .

I believe pulse will work on any Telco supplied line .including DSL equipped alternative lines not so sure

 

You should be able to see the mechanical contacts that make and break during dialing, to verify that part is operating correctly.

 

Try switching the red/green in the jack. A lot of the older phones like that are polarity sensitive. They won't dial if the polarity is reversed........have seen it lots of times..

 

TT dial yes the early WE dials where polarity sensitive due to electronics in sending DTMF

rotary is make break of contacts , no polarity involved ,

 

An easy test to see if you can pulse dial on that line is to tap the cradle buttons. For example, to dial 4-1-1 you'd tap quickly four times, pause for a second, tap once, pause, and tap once. (Try a real 7-digit number, though, or you'll get charged the 411 fee!)

 

or just use the switch and set your phone (electronic dial not rotary dial )from Tone to Pulse .

 

As far as I understand this is a rotary dial phone wired as this diagram.
http://www.telephonecollectors.org/l...weco/558ab.pdf

dsk

 

That is what this person is describing, and is consistent with every western electric rotary set I have ever seen throughout my career. It would be polarity sensitive and I believe that is the root of this problem. Like I said, all that probably needs done is flopping the red & green in the jack and it should work....

 

OP has a 554

554 is a ROTARY dial wall phone, not polarity sensitive
(wall version of the 500 set )

3554 would be a touch tone dial wall phone and early ones where polarity sensitive


polarity has nothing to do with ROTARY dial and only applies to early western electric touch tone dials as polarity guards where incorporated long ago

 

Thanks everyone for all your help and suggestions. I corrected the problem. I had the green wire from the handset connected to L1. I looked at the wiring schematic and moved that green wire from L1 to RR. The phone now works great! Thanks again for all the help! Frank

 

glad to hear its working ,

thanks for letting us know what the problem was

 

Sounds like you are good to go. For dial timing, the phrase I that old timers used was this ( Dial "0") as soon as you take your finger out of the hole, say this "you better be right you son of a b%#**" If the dial stopped just as you finished speaking, the timing was OK!


As far as polarity, reversed T/R could cause bell tap, but I think the phone would work. Possibly mattered if you were on a party line, or before dials! Yes virginia, when I was little there was no dial on the phone, and 3 different homes were on the same line. 1 ring was us, 2 rings was the johnsons, etc. When we got the first dial phone, I think our number was 3 digits. 927 was our number. Funny how you remember stuff like that.