I have been slumming it with a phone coupler that lets my recording equipment tap into my phone line. Only, it worked really poorly and required an old-fashioned phone. Not just any phone—it had to be one with a coil-wired handset (no cordless phones) and the handset could not have the dialing mechanism in it (had to be a phone with the buttons or dial on the base). Also, I found that the audio quality was poor on all but this one rotary phone that we had a few years back—the last time I used this device. Anyway, long story short: Scott threw that phone away when we moved to Boston, thinking “Why the heck would we need some mustard-yellow dinosaur of a rotary phone?” I do not fault him, but trying to replace it has been hell. The worst part is that I have a lovely, pink, vintage rotary princess phone that I bought for our phone nook. But that one wouldn’t do because the coiled wire was hard-wired into the handset instead of jacked in. GEEZ—that means that the only phones that will work with this damn thing had to be made between 1965 and 1975 or something!
So after much lying awake at night worried that I was going to have to back out of my new job for lack of a 1971 Bell rotary phone (how would I explain that to my new client?), I bought the new fancy equipment. It is deliciously high tech! It allows me to patch into the phone line of any residential phone at the base wire. And, it supposedly lets me split the two tracks, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. There is nothing more thrilling than having new gear!
My dream is to convert one of my closets into a little one-woman recording studio. I’m now one piece of equipment closer to realizing it.
[Image from: http://www.pedalcarsandretro.com/Retro_Phones-p-1-c-66.html]
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