Category Archives: ringers

Various Hands

Leave a reply

rebrand

The phone above was originally a Swedish phone, created for the European market in 1962. It is a flat new case.

Sometimes the need for phones in certain markets was so big that other markets had to deliver them. This is the case here. This phone was more or less re-branded from European to North Electric, to be sold on the US market.

rebrandlight

rebranddial

In this picture you can see that the neon light that is normally present on the Ericotone ringer is applied on the chassis directly. This makes sure the phone lights up when it rings.

 

The other picture shows the original dial face sticker that was used to re-brand the dial face from a 1 to 0 dial face to a North Electric like dial face including the letters so typical for the US.

rebrandring1rebrandring2rebrandring3

The missing Ericotone was replaced with the external Ericsson ringer with the buzzer. The big wall moutable box only contains a small buzzer as normally used outside the US. It sounds different, but in the end, various hands transferred an European Ericofon ready to be sold in the US.

(With The Broadest Shoulders)

Leave a reply

AztecGoldDuo

AztecGoldFlat

On this sunny day I received another shining Aztec Gold model. 🙂

This one has a flat ear-piece and it is in a much better shape than the wedge. It is not such a big ‘mess’ when it comes to parts as the wedge. It has consistent ‘part-management’ so to say.

AztecGoldFlatInside

This phone came originally in the color 520553, which is Candle Glow. The date on the chassis is 1967, the date on the shell is 1968. So this is pretty much in line. The only dissonant item is the microphone, which dates back to 1957. But hey, there are worst things in life. There is an Ericotone version 3 ringer inside as well.

What I noticed today is that both Aztec Gold have some silver layer underneath the gold. This is applied as a primer I expect. Not sure, but from the insides they look the same. Tape-shaped original color and silver sprayed inside.

Gold Is The Metal

Leave a reply

Aztec3

Yeehaa! Today I received my Aztec Gold Ericofon. The gold paint has some wear and needs to be restored here and there. But that I already knew upfront. Actually I did not have too much time this evening to check it out but there is one thing that I wanted to know: the insides.

I unpacked it and removed the chassis to check what was inside. Hmm…

Aztec0

So what do we have?

A K14 rotary chassis with an Ericotone version 3 ringer and a standard North Electric dial face. The shell was something to puzzle about. It is a Taj Mahal TouchTone shell that was adapted to fit a rotary chassis (thanks Richard!). Looking into the shell you will see that there are plastic cubes glued into the shell to fit the 4 screws. The receiver is soldered directly to the contacts because the contact pads are missing. Also the microphone is glued into the shell. A weird combination of parts, most likely put together by North Electric.

Update the day after:

Aztec1Aztec2

As you can the see the  shell has some wear and damage on the paint. In the next few weeks I will try to restore this. Not sure yet how I want to do this. The advantage I have is that the surface is not very smooth. It looks like, and that is the purpose of this Aztec Gold, that small water drops are all over the phone.

In the pictures below you can see the details of the shell and the contacts. Since the shell is a Touch Tone, there are no brackets to mount the chassis on. This is resolved with the plastic parts glued inside the shell. Very creative. The speaker is glued into the shell as well and can’t be removed. The contacts are fixed to the speaker wires.

AztecInsideAztecContact

The strange thing is that under the dial face the chassis is marked with week 19, 1972. On the top of the chassis it is dated with week 42, 1974. My conclusion is that the original chassis was made in 1972 but that this phone was put together in 1974. Because Touch Tones were produced until 1972, the stock with TT shells was obsolete in 1974 and used for other purposes.

As I understood, the Aztec Gold phones appear in different versions (rotary, Touch Tone and also with a flat ear-piece). This Aztec Gold was produced in the aftermath of North Electric, just before they sold their Ericofon assets to CEAC.