The best sounding POTS landline phone?

July 27, 2022 7:48 PM

In the history of landline phones, were there particular models known for having especially clear sound?
posted by fake to Grab Bag (17 answers total)

The Western Electric models 500 and 2500 were, I think, the gold standard of "regular" telephone sets in all regards. Build quality, reliability, as well as audio quality.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 8:11 PM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

No, I cannot recall any time that was a thing. Until the early 70s most phones were rented from the phone company, and it was only into the early 80s that a phone was something you could buy with any sort of options, hence the rise of novelty phones (plus cordless phones) that looked cool but otherwise were the exact same amplifier and transmitter guts.

Sound quality and connection quality, if discussed, was understood to be a feature of the lines and switching stations. Like, I stopped being able to really hear anyone when my phone rang on my personal teenage line in the mid 80s and the phone company came out and retrieved a fried squirrel from a nearby connection junction; another time I had trouble and the problem was flooding in the underground parts of the telephony network. You called the phone company if you had a problem; it wasn't until unregulated phones that the problem might even be in the phone itself. Those old bakelite and hard plastic models were capable of being used as murder weapons and working perfectly.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:12 PM on July 27, 2022 [9 favorites]

When the phone company owned the phones and all lines were POTS lines? All phones sounded great, and all the same. Man, I miss that!
posted by shadygrove at 8:20 PM on July 27, 2022 [10 favorites]

Plus, you could use them crack walnuts.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:28 PM on July 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

Bear in mind that the frequency response of POTS was around 3KHz. So, even if a model were particularly renowned for having good audio quality, that's kind of like saying that one of Mozart's piano concertos is particularly well-reproduced by a certain model of tambourine.
posted by 7segment at 8:38 PM on July 27, 2022 [12 favorites]

I still keep two 1960s WE 500 rotary phones hooked up to the landline at my house because I find the sound quality is so much better than anything else I’ve used. And I like the sound of a real telephone ringer… I always know when it up is our phone ringing when I’m out in the yard.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:26 PM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

With wired ones, yes, there was some variation in the quality of the speaker and the mic. But beyond that, there could be big ranges in how well they did in rejecting RF interference and such. I grew up near a large radio station and my dad bought cheap cheap cheap phones and we got various hums, buzzes, and sometimes the radio on them. Whereas the rotary dial ones that had been installed by the phone company back in the day were more or less clear.

Once you got to cordless phones, that too would lead to some phones sounding better than others depending on the tech and quality.
posted by Candleman at 10:10 PM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think it is worth mentioning conference room phones. They deal with the same lousy signal as any other phone - but there were going to show up in big flashy board rooms where price was not an issue. Look at a product like the Polycom SoundStation 2 - in this link to Amazon - we see an example selling for £489. This is essentially the same product that I remember seeing in the 1990s - it seems like not great value for money - but I would challenge people to find something which makes those speaking locally and those dialling in - sound better. Here is somebody reviewing one.
posted by rongorongo at 3:43 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: We had a ridiculously 90s blue triangular section Bang and Olufsen phone for decades which had great sound quality. We kept it until the end of using fixed lines as it was just so good. A bit of poking around tells me it was the Beocom 1600. Breathless enthusiasm from Wired in 1996 here. They seem easy enough to find, here’s one on Etsy.
posted by tardigrade at 5:04 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

Landlines we’re not designed for clarity, they were designed so you could mostly understand someone at a distance. There was little need to build a phone that exceeded that because all the other parts of the system (wires, switches, etc.) would not support any better quality. It would be like drinking greywater out of crystal.
posted by Ookseer at 6:52 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'd say they were very much designed for clarity. Exactly as much as was necessary to understand what a person was saying, which they did very well. Far better than most digital cell phones, which cut it much closer to the edge in the name of increased capacity.

In general, though, except for really cheap junk or speakerphones, which had wide variation in quality, landline phones all sounded about the same unless they were broken or the line was bad, which was a thing. Hum, clicks, and pops, mainly. That was pretty rare to have consistently except in exceedingly rural areas where the line was 10 miles long and even then it was the exception.
posted by wierdo at 8:31 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

They may have sort-of designed for clarity, but MCI advertising in the 1990s was a pin dropping (so quiet you can hear a pin drop), which was fiber optic long distance, so long-distance quality was questionable and considered to be enough of an advantage to build a marketing campaign around.

IMO, if you compare it to 2g-3G cell phone quality, landline was better, but VOIP even on cellphones is far higher quality. Music sounded terrible on landlines.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:54 AM on July 28, 2022

When all we had was landlines most phone calls were local, because long-distance was expensive as well as crackly.

I expect there were some poor local connections, but I remember quite good local POTS.

Like fimbulvetr we keep a heavy old Ma Bell rotary because I find the handset surprisingly comfortable for long calls, and the sound pleasant. Also it looks like a skeuomorph of itself which earns its space even when we aren’t using it.
posted by clew at 1:03 PM on July 28, 2022

I've got one of those solid black Western Electrics mentioned by Juffo-Wup 'way upthread; wish I still had the land line to plug it into. "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone"
posted by Rash at 2:13 PM on July 28, 2022

MCI advertising in the 1990s was a pin dropping

That was Sprint.
posted by jocelmeow at 3:58 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I ended up buying a Western Electric 2500DM. Thanks all.
posted by fake at 7:09 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

IMO, if you compare it to 2g-3G cell phone quality, landline was better, but VOIP even on cellphones is far higher quality. Music sounded terrible on landlines.

A 3KHz cutoff will do that. Still better than voice optimized digital codecs, though.

I ended up buying a Western Electric 2500DM.

Good choice. If you'll use it often for really long calls and you want your hands free you can go full retro and stick a shoulder brace to the handset.
posted by wierdo at 7:46 PM on July 28, 2022