To realise my proposed idea, I first had to acquire landlines. It felt significant to the work that, where possible, sustainable materials could be used. I sourced second hand landlines from charity shops, eBay, and people within the community.
Using my existing knowledge from previous projects involving circuit bending and hardware electronics I began to plan and research how I would be adapting the phones so that sound files could be played from Raspberry PI’s.
To ensure that I didn’t damage a phone I planned on using for exhibiting, I bought a cheap vintage landline that is easy to find, a 1980s BT landline. I didn’t want to potentially irreversibly damage a rare/ collectable phone as that would’ve felt to me like damaging an artefact.
To be able to rewire the phones to a 3.5mm input I first hand to remove the casing to see which wires were connected to the speakers. With the colours of the speaker known, I noted this down for later.
The easiest way to rewire the phone speaker was to cut the wire connecting the hand piece to base. By cutting here the aesthetics of curled telephone wire stay in tact and there is plenty of room for stripping the wire, this proved to be essential as vintage telephone wires are very delicate due to there use of copper which is a very expansive material to be used in mass produced affordable technology.
The best wire to plug in to a play back device for this project is a 3.5mm Aux Stereo 4 Pole Jack Plug, I found this through watching youtube tutorials on rewiring landlines.
The stripped wire was then twisted to strengthen the connection. The neutral and live wire are twisted together as suggested in the youtube tutorial.
By using crocodile clips I could test the connection. To test the connection I used a radio that was battery powered as that is safer than testing on something plugged into main power supply.
I used diagrams to help with the soldering process. After testing with crocodile clips and finding the correct connections, I noted this down so that when soldering I could feel confident it was the right connections and avoid making mistakes.
After soldering, I tested each phone again to check it was working as it should be. By using a test tone video from YouTube, I could test the functionality of the phone, both that speaker was working and how it was working (what frequencies it was capable of playing). Through taking note of my observations during the test tone video, I could use this knowledge when composing for the phones as it exemplified sounds that would/would not be audible through the phones.
Bibliography
Drawbridge Props & Armoury (2017). DIY Retro Cell Phone Handset: Making a vintage prop phone play sound or music. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppr3ilJP-I8&list=PL6lurFz_C8ADjihIjwbmfdAVG8LZg0n2F [Accessed 5 Dec. 2025].