Tag: princess

In the very unlikely event that you want to repair a broken handset socket on a Princess telephone …

It seems that Princess telephones — like the one I have — were notorious for having their connectors break. The connectors are made of brittle thermoset resin, and sit just where they’d hit the ground if you dropped the phone. This is definitely what happened here:

Very broken 616p modular handset connector. Pins are (l to r): Black, Green, White, Red

For the handset, you want a 616P connector. If your wall connector has gone too, you’ll need the 623P connector for that. These are fairly readily available on eBay.

These instructions really only apply to the 2702BMG model of the Princess phone. There are many variants, and the 2702BMG was one of the last Princess models made.

  1. Remove the upper body by unscrewing the two screws at each end of the base

    Undo the screws at left and right to remove the case
  2. Remove the body, and remove the keypad. This is held in by two screws, one on each side of the keypad
  3. If your phone’s anything like mine, untwist the wires inside to get the line and handset connectors separated
  4. Unhook the old connectors from the terminals, and attach the new connectors as shown:

    Handset wiring: Green → S, White & Red → R, Black → T
  5. Slot the handset modular connector into its space in the phone chassis
  6. Replace the keypad
  7. Re-route the wires so they don’t get pinched or block the handset hook, then re-attach the plastic body with the two screws.

 

Ringing like 1984: Western Electric “Princess”

Western Electric “Princess” compact telephone from 1984

I got this phone at a junk swap event. It had a broken handset jack, but I got a replacement from OldPhoneWorks.

It has a distinctive, loud ring:

(Alternative Freesound link: Western Electric Princess Telephone Ringing)

That’s a lot of noise from a small phone!

Western Electric “Princess” compact telephone ­— base. Note mid-1984 production date: after the US Bell breakup

If you want the ringtone for your phone, here it is as an Ogg file for Android: WesternElectric-Princess_Ring-mobile.zip

Western Electric “Princess” Telephone Ringing
Recording © 2018, Stewart C. Russell — scruss.com

provided under the Creative Commons — Attribution 2.5 
Canada — CC BY 2.5 CA licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ca/