Using LED Lights in Western Electric Princess Telephones
By Noah Woods

 

702/2702 Princess collectors, there is news for you! A modern, bright, LED-style light has been found for the Princess phone that DIRECTLY replaces the stock GE/CM 259 incandescent bulb originally used in the Princess!

With how LED lights have been making such huge inroads into lighting all sorts of gadgets, including modern phones, some of you may have been wondering if there was a way to upgrade the lighting in your Princess phone to this new technology. Well, I was too, and I decided to see for myself if there was.

Now, I’m a young rotary phone collector (24) who’s more retro than anything when it comes to phones. I've become a die-hard rotary phone fanatic and one who spurns modern phones, including cell phones. In January or February of this year, I bought from Richard an ivory 702BM Princess, with transformer kit, because of the allure of having a rotary phone that could light up like so many of the modern phones can.

After the phone arrived, and unpacking it, I was a bit disappointed at how dim the lighting was on-hook in ‘nightlight’ mode with the stock incandescent bulb. The off-hook brightness of the light inside was good. It was only the on-hook, ‘night light’ mode of the lighting that I didn't like, so I started wondering if an LED could be adapted to work in the Princess.

Unlike what you might be thinking, I set out from the beginning of this little project with the intention of putting an LED bulb in my 702BM without irreversibly modifying the phone, and preferably with no modifications at all to the phone itself! From the beginning, I wanted to be able to switch my 702BM back (and forth!) between LED lighting and old fashioned incandescent lighting without having to perform modifications to the phone.

Friends, allow me introduce you to a company that makes an LED bulb that fits directly into the 702/2702’s lamp socket, and works using the stock W.E. 2012 transformer.
This company is based out of St. Louis, MO, and makes a line of 12-volt 194-wedge base bulbs meant originally for use in automotive applications, but are also perfect for use in the Princess. They are the WLED line.		  

 

Click the logo above to visit the web site home page, or CLICK HERE to go directly to the page dealing with the bulbs discussed here.

 

Here’s their bulbs that can work with the W.E. 2012 transformer, because I have tested them myself

As you can see, each one of these bulbs have the same base as the GE/CM 259 incandescent bulbs the 702/2702’s bulb socket normally accepts. Originally, these were made to be used in 12-14 VDC automotive applications, but because these two bulb types are non-polarized and work whatever the current direction, they can work off the AC power supplied by the 2012 transformer. I have had one of the WLED-x6 bulbs installed in my own 702 for four months now, with the phone in night-light mode and the bulb lit 24-hours a day off the AC transformer for most of that time now and no problems.

    

WLED-x6

WLED-x5
WLED-x5 (Lit up)

 

Now for some Photos

The bulb in the original packaging
This is the bulb in the Princess socket
The socket and bulb next to the 702 I bought from Richard and used for this project.

 

Now to the good stuff, the test photos!

First Light up!

 

Now for some darkness photos

Off hook test

 

 

On hook test
Notice the much improved brightness, and this is with the resistor still in place inside the phone. The only modification here to the phone itself was to simply drop-in the LED bulb in place of the incandescent bulb in the bulb socket. I believe this brightness is due to the extremely low current draw of the LEDs.

The above photos were taken with the WLED-W6 bulb, the white-light color WLED-x6 bulb.

 


WLED-A6 amber bulb in phone		 Now for a photo with a WLED-A6 bulb, the amber-light one, plus showing the stock transformer that has powered both bulbs.

The test leads and banjo adapter are in the pictures because I was also reading the voltage the transformer was sending into the phone.
Western Electric 2012 Transformer

 

Here, we see that the transformer is putting out 14.2 VAC. "Wait, what’s going on?!" you may ask? While the 2012 transformer may put out normally 6-8 VAC, that’s with the transformer hooked up with one of the incandescent bulbs in the socket. The LEDs only draw a mere fraction of the current the old-style bulbs do, which is why the transformer is putting out possibly 6 more volts.

  

 

 On DC power, these bulbs are rated for 10,000+ hours, or about 14 months run-time lit for 24 hours a day, and assuming 720 hours a month. On AC power, I’m conservatively estimating these bulbs will light for 5000-6000 hours, about the same length of time the stock incandescent bulbs are rated for. Realistically, they might possibly run for a bit more time than that. Bulb life wasn't a factor in me choosing to do this project to begin with, it was only getting a brighter light inside the phone without possibly melting something and damaging the phone that concerned me. The WLED bulbs are MUCH cooler in temperature in operation, and do not get hot to the touch at all. They do get a little warm, but nowhere near hot enough to potentially melt something.

For those who are interested, in the coming days there will be info coming on modifying a 14 volt AC/DC adapter from Radio Shack to replace the 2012 transformer should you wish to do so and get the maximum life out of the LED bulbs. This will also allow the use of more of superbrightled's line of WLED bulbs, mainly including many of the polarized ones that only work in one current direction.

I was originally going to do this project such that modified AC/DC adapters were mainly to be used, but did more experiments to see if the 2012 transformer could be used without too much tradeoff in LED life because I didn't want to get into spending all my free-time making the mod AC/DC adapters to supply people who wanted to do this.

 

Email contacts:

Noah Woods

Richard Rose