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New here, I did a search and couldn't find it so here goes, what is the best,,,,cheapest,,,,, way to create the telephone sound. I would assume it is a combination of eq and something else.

Any tips would be great,

Thanks,
Phal

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McAllister Thu, 01/10/2002 - 07:47

This is easy and cheap.

1) go to a thrift store and find an old AT&T rotary phone. Look for the kind that have an un-screwable earpiece & mouthpiece.

2) save the handset, junk the phone. Open up both sides of the handset. Junk the bit in the earpiece. Save the bit (mic) in the mouth piece.

3) Clip all wires. The mic has 2 leads on it - most of these are screwed in. You can attach a cable to these & run the wire out through the hole where the old phone cord went. Mine go to XLR.

4) Voila. Instant phone sound for any application.

anonymous Thu, 01/10/2002 - 09:44

Phal,

The _basic_ way is to use a High-cut AND a low-cut filter set to approx. ~500Hz (Low) and ~3kHz. You may have to choose these corner frequencies narrower if your filters aren't that steep. It also helps to use another band of narrow bandwidth peak EQ to add boost @ ~2kHz.
Well and if you don't have any Hi/Lo-cut filters you'd need to use shelving EQs to roll off the high end and low end.
It's of course much more authentic to use actual telephones (as mentioned before) or to use distortion/guitar amps, but what I've described is the total basic & post-production way.

Hope that helps,

Matthias

Guest Fri, 01/11/2002 - 05:21

If you don't happen to have a Neve "Teledistortion" module kicking around... my next favorite is to use something like an Auratone [small 3" speaker kinda thing], overdrive it a tad, then put a "bullhorn" in front of it. Mic it with a 57 or whatever you have laying around...

Works like a charm.

AudioGaff Wed, 01/16/2002 - 08:13

Radio shack or Markertek should carry a box that connects to the phone and has RCA line out. I picked up one a few years ago. I usually just use my Eventide DSP4500 telephone preset as it is easier to use and I can also further manipulate the sound as well with things like random noise, drop-outs, soft squeals, keypad dual dialing tones, phone ringer ect...

- Bruce -