Retro Handsets For Your Cellphone - Pt. 2

Now that you've tackled the Bluetooth Handset, it's time to make a good 'ol fashioned wired handset for your cellphone. This modification is almost just as easy as the bluetooth, except you need to deal with four wires instead of two.

There are actually two ways of doing this; Wiring a 2.5mm jack onto an existing cable or creating an adapter that will allow you to use any handset with your cellphone. I will cover them both in this article.

If you want to get really creative, you can use an old rotary lineman's phone which can usually be found on ebay. Otherwise, check your local thrift store for a handset that will suit your needs. The only requirement (if you want this to be easy), is that you get a phone where the handset is JUST a handset - no numbers or other features should be on the handset itself.

Please note that this will not work with every cellphone. Check to see if yours has a 2.5mm jack or some other weird connector (like most Nokia phones).

USING AN EXISTING CABLE

If you decide to use an existing cable, you will need to get a 2.5mm jack from your local Radio Shack or other electronic supply store (we prefer other). These are kinda a pain in the butt to work with, so if you don't already have a pair of helping hands, pick one of those up too. You can also enlist a brave friend to hold the pieces together while you try to solder them.

From here, the wiring is simple. Just cut off the connector from the far end of your cable and splice on the 2.5mm jack. Here is a diagram showing what colors go where.

As you can see tip, ring, and sleeve are wired to speaker, mic, and ground - respectively. After you get this all wired, simply close it up (or wrap in in electrical tape like I always do), and you're done!

HANDSET ADAPTER

If you want to be able to easily switch between different handsets (to match your outfit or whatever), then you should make a small adapter instead of wiring up the cable on your handset. This is also good because you don't have to cut up any phone cords to do it.

In my case it was cheaper to make two adapters then one. This is because buying female to female RJ-11 connectors was cheaper than buying the single connector. This will probably depend on where you shop. Anyway, it's nice to have two - one for a friend or just to have as backup.

What you need (yield: 2 adapters):

1 Female to Female RJ-11 adapter (AKA RJ11 extender)
1 Male to Male 2.5mm Cable

Those parts look like this:

Now split the RJ11 adapter in half. This can be done easily by pulling on either end. You might need to get a screwdriver involved, but I didn't have to with mine. Opening it will reveal the wires we talked about earlier: red, yellow, green, and black. Go ahead and snip them right in the middle.

Cut the 2.5mm cable in half as well, and strip all the wires out. This will reveal three wires: red, white, and copper (ground). Now you simply splice them together like this:

RED -- RED

YELLOW -- WHITE

BLACK/GREEN -- COPPER

You can see I cut a little notch with a rotary tool into the casing on mine as a place for the wire to come out. This is optional. On the second one I ended up cutting most of the plastic off. I haven't decided which I like better.

It's that easy. Now close up with some electrical tape if you want it to look ghetto fabulous, or you can make some cleaner looking enclosure if you prefer. The final product should look something like this.

Go ahead an try it out by plugging the 2.5mm end into your cellphone, and plugging in a telephone handset into the RJ11 end. That's it!

Add new comment

This is really a great post

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 5:04am.

This is really a great post thanks for this
personal statement editing service