Setting up a NEW 1982 Answering Machine (with Bluetooth!)
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- Unboxing and testing a new old stock Record-a-Call Model 675 from 40 years ago! A woodgrain-clad answering machine that uses full-size compact cassette tapes to record messages, which I've paired with a lovely 1979 Deco-Tel Chest Phone. Let's try it out with an XLink Bluetooth adapter on a modern VoIP service!
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● All background music licensed from:
www.epidemicsound.com
00:00 Intro to the Record a Call 675
03:16 Background & They Might Be Giants
05:12 New Old Stock Unboxing
10:33 Ooh, Dat Answering Machine
15:28 The 1979 Chestphone
16:45 Testing the XLink Gateway
20:00 Leaving a Message!
21:34 Does the Remote Work?
24:25 Outroduction
#LGR #Retro #Technology - Věda a technologie
Imagine telling someone from the 80s that one day we'll all watch someone on the internet set up their answering machine, for fun!
It's 1984. What the hell is an internet? You mean that thing Matthew Broderick almost destroyed the world with?
And you would watch it on your phone in the bathroom.
@@deadmetalbr It did exist in the 1980s but only the government, military and universities had access to it AFAIK. Home computers could connect to BBS or talk to each other over the phone tho, and that's what happens precisely in the War Games movie.
Back in the 80's I predicted that one day there would be a channel of nothing but commercials. Now, there are many popular retro commercial channels on CZcams.
But in the late 1970s you could have a Top Ten hit singing about an answering machine
czcams.com/video/YGlZD8gFBD0/video.html
It was a bigger flex having an answering machine in 1982 than it is to have a PS5 now.
I remember it was ballin to have a cordless phone with caller id in the 90's...
It's even now a bigger flex imo 💪
@@Clos93 Even if you could afford caller ID in the 90's not every telco offered it like my mother, and grandmother's houses had GTE(now Verizon) which could not get it, and my dad lived just outside the town limits, and had Bellsouth so he could get caller ID but if someone on GTE did call him it would not show up on the caller ID, so yeah it was a big flex indeed.
@@CommodoreFan64 You could probably run up a phone bill with *69 calls.
@@Aeduo *69 eventually became a free feature once GTE, and Bell Atlantic became Verizon, but they did charge an arm, and a leg for a land line as I had to use one till 07 before my area got "high speed" internet with Atlantic Broadband(now Breezeline) 8Mbps/3Mbps around late 07(much better now with gigabit plans, but they charge out the nose for it so I pull 160Mbps/30Mbps), I had 2 POTS lines with Verizon one with long distance, and one local only for dial-up, and I was paying $115 a month on top of my dial-up ISP charges.
Using the fireplace as a backdrop is so good, and it fits crazy well with the trademark LGR woodgrain themes!
If there only was a fire inside it for some ambient lighting
@@iHawke It was 91°F the day I recorded... adding fire would be torture
@@LGR Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Roasted Clint *drools*
@@pointdironie5832 those flame shaped pieces of paper that balance on a magnet.
@@LGR Clint what you need for your fireplace is one of those cheesy 70's electric logs, Just turn the heater off and BAM instant fireplace no heat, cheesy 70's fake log!!!
I love how even someone that makes a living talking to themselves on camera has such an awkward time recording their voicemail/answering machine greeting. 🤣
"outgoing announcement" killed me 🤣
It always took me a couple of tries
@@alanwebster3942 **record** "Hi, you've reached.. uh....." **delete** **record** "Hi! You've reached the residence. For dablub-blah, gahh... (sigh)" **delete** **record** "Hi, you've reached--"
**an attempt or two later...**
**record** "Hi, you've reached the residence. To leave a message for , press 3. [~10 seconds of silence...] ...No mailbox selected, now defaulting to
I know. Still seems to get the "oh shit I'm live!" Moment with it lol.
That first message he recorded sounded like he was calling from the Upside Down.
The 4/1 setting was what was called a toll saver. Back in the dark ages, when long distance charges were a thing, you could call your answering machine from vacation and if it didn't pick up after one ring, you could hang up and save yourself the phone call fees, since they didn't start until the other end picked up the phone.
Cool find Clint. Great episode!
It's kinda sad that toll call charges are still a thing for actual phone lines; I used to work for a company that sold a turnkey VOIP solution, and since we plugged directly into the PSTN we constantly had to be on the lookout for toll fraud.
IT'S THE DAMN FUTURE WHY IS THIS STILL AN ISSUE
Great point, I forgot all about the toll saver feature. People forget how big a deal long distance was back in the day.
@@EdHelms1 Yeah long distance was a huge deal back in the 80's when the Bell system was broken up, as I live in a somewhat rural area, where our schools were, and still are made up of students from surrounding towns just a few minutes apart from each other(5 to 10 minutes max), and if you wanted to call your friend from class who lived the next town over that was a stupid expensive long distance charge, and expect to get yelled at by your parents for running up the phone bill if you did not ask first, and if you did, and they said yes, then you were on a time limit.
@@CommodoreFan64 thankfully where I lived, they had an option named "extended local" which allowed us to call other communities within the county. There were still per minute charges (or maybe per call, I forget), but they were much lower than regular long distance rates.
@@juliedunken1150 Definitely does not sound like something 90% of people had, my family certainly didn't. To avoid long distance charges, when my aunt drove home my mom would make a collect call with a fake name and if she declined the charges she'd know she got there safely.
The message you left at 21:11 ended up sounding like something from a sci-fi horror movie and it honestly made me laugh more than it should have. Can't wait to see your 70s room whenever it's finished. I'm so here for it.
That "message from Hell" part was hilarious. I was cracking up all through it.
Also, it the message itself sounds like it could be from some sci-fi/mystery show of the time this machine was made. Like the hero gets a message like that and has to go investigate who called him and what happened to that person.
“But how does it smell?”
This is why LGR is one of the best channels.
"Definitely smells electronicy"
he's the closest we've got to the fabled smell-o-vision!
I love how the silical gel pack is so old that it doesnt have a "do not eat" disclaimer on it
The fact that had to be added onto silica gel packaging in later years is kind of sad....
That might have been before they even knew it was dangerous. Go back much further than that and they were literally mixing it into jars of seasonings to prevent clumping.
LGR/TMBG crossover was something I didn't realize I was missing from my life 😍
right?! dial-a-song was so cool & the last thing I was expecting was to learn stuff about that during LGR time!
Omg this is one of your funniest videos 😂
The initial greeting you recorded, and then the feedback on the message. Top notch!
I remember in the 90s my dad calling our answering machine remotely to listen to messages. Also I remember when my parents bought a new tape that had way more minutes so you didn't have to clear your messages as often.
"Top notch!" Indeed, though the closed caption should've been "[beeps TO INFINITY]" 😀
And yah, Dad used to check messages remotely from work sometimes in the 90s and 00s. Especially in high school, I'd hear the other end of the call on occasion if I was home early enough. The machine would pick up, then it would stop mid-greeting and start playing back any messages once Dad entered the code.
We had a tapeless machine built into the kitchen phone by then, and caller ID boxes on most of our phones.
The remote control feature for answering machines was how “phone hacking” was done back in the day. Journalists would listen to messages on Lady Dianne’s answer phone and many other celebrities.
Didn't think it when I started this video, but this was one of the most interesting videos I've watch on LGR in a long time.
I could totally see the "recording from hell" being animated or used in memes.
Or used as an audio sample. I've been organizing my sampler libraries recently cleaning up ones for the Ensoniq Mirage and EMU SP-1200. I might add this one.
I was thinking the samen
@8 Bit Guy YTP Productions
Record a Call was the top brand back in the day and was usually the first to introduce new features that the other companies eventually copied. They were way too expensive for most people and those who had them considered them to be some sort of status symbol. That domination didn't last very long though because eventually the market was flooded with different answering machines and Radio Shack became the most popular ones seen in homes. Most likely because they were also pushing their cordless phones hard and it seems like everyone had one of those too. Radio Shack also was one of the first companies that sold an affordable model that used the small tapes. They made a few models that looked very similar to ones labeled Record a Call so I often wondered back then if they were made by the same company.
And yes, I'm old. It wouldn't surprise me if I was your oldest subscriber here. Thanks for the memories. I had a Radio Shack. I couldn't afford a Record a Call. I love that phone in the box.
The Record-A-Call 675 cost $179.97 in August 1983. That's equal to $550.57 today.
Oh man, these were high-tech for the day lol can't forget about the ol' answering machines - unreal that you've set it up with bluetooth dude!
I don't care what anybody else thinks, I love this era of design.
So do I really. You cannot go past 1975-83 for aesthetics.
@@millsyinnz I'll take fake woodgrain over glossy fingerprint-magnet plastic any day
it's the best era imo. mid century design principles at the peak of modernism. dieter rams took it the furthest as early as the 1950s, heavily inspired by bauhaus, which got rid of all the wood grain so everything was minimalist down to the colour and that less is more design principle still influences almost all industrial design to this day
Hell yeah. My dream car is some 1970s V8 land yacht with wire wheels, vinyl landau roof, opera windows, script badges, heraldic crests on the tail lights and of course acres of rich Corinthian leather :)
Fake woodgrain is kino
OMG the 1979 Chest Phone is back! The paring of this phone and the Record-a-Call answering machine is a perfect match. So awesome to see it in the video, can't wait to see your 70/80's room when it's done. Thanks for the mention Clint, it was great meeting you at VCFMW!!! 👍
If only he'd grabbed that brown Exeter he spotted in the last thrifts episode. Glad to see another fan of the Design Line and glad you gave LGR that lovely simulated walnut Chestphone
Ahh the days before caller ID, screening your calls by waiting for the machine to answer so you can fond out who it is. Instense nostalgia.
My aunt still does this. I start leaving a message and she picks up when she hears my voice.
@@dummptyhummpty I do this now with my house phone because sometimes I don't recognize the number on my caller id. So I wait for the voicemail to see who it is.
People still do this. Sometimes you don't want to talk to family and will get back to them after you hear what they want. Also there's telemarketers, scammers, and everything else.
My parents had an answering machine in the early 80s. It wasn't the Record-a-Call 675 but the style was similar, with the woodgrain top and silver band around the controls. IIRC it used full size cassettes but the announcement was an endless loop. It came with the cassettes which had green and red color coded labels. The thing I most remember about the one they had was that nearby thunderstorms could cause it to answer and record several seconds of dial tone.
Yeah likely because lightning sent a pulse on the phone line. Trigging answering machine. Likely confusing it with a tone or incoming call voltage. The static discharge alone from lightning can cause "phantom" electrical signals
You know, just seeing these woodgrain electronics for 25 minutes is simply delightful. Your channel has become a severe comfort watch for me over the years. :)
8:45 back when AC adapters were actually AC adapters and not AC/DC Adapters, since that one still outputs alternating current. Presumably the Answering Machine has a built in rectification circuit.
The retro room sounds like a really neat project, hope it goes well
The amount of ingenuity of humankind to develop this is amazing. Thank you for show us.
Also: it's incredible how many things where made obsolete by the cell phone, the most futuristic tecnology we have seen
A lot of cellphone service still has really crappy call in voicemail services, too. Thankfully "visual voicemail" is much more common nowadays, but it's still a relatively recent thing.
@@Aeduo The voicemail on my cell phone service is pretty basic, but not at all difficult. Though I do wish scammers would hang up _before_ leaving 2-second messages of silence.
Telemarketers and phone scammers use automated services over VoIP that will robodial every number they can find. This system takes several seconds when it gets a "hit" on a number to engage and forward the call to the scammer's PC so they can try and get you. @@AaronOfMpls
You should find some of the pre recorded funny greeting tapes that where sold back in the 80’s. We had a few different ones and they where absolutely ridiculous in all their 80’s glory.
Remember Seinfeld? "Believe it or not George isn't at home... where can he beee?"
@@greendryerlint that’s funny! I completely forgot about that.
Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time had some answering machine tracks you could use. I used the "Silly Voices Preservation Society" on mine. I had a message one day from a guy that was trying to catch his breath from laughing, saying "Well, I guess this ain't Jones Brothers Welding & Construction... or I hope it ain't!" Good times.
I really felt your joy in recording this episode, more than any other before. And the sound of this great machine is reminiscent of a 70's LGR leaving a message to today's LGR. Fantastic.
Thanks a lot.
Cool. I had a Record A Call unit that was almost exactly like this one, but I bought it in 1985. By this time they had done away with the remote control, and you accessed your messages remotely by punching in a three digit code on the phone’s touchtone pad. I tried to find one online just now but wasn’t able to.
Finally found it on eBay. It was the Record A Call 655. My 3-digit touchtone code for retrieving messages was 212. It was preset in the machine. Why do I remember this? I have no idea... 🤔
Can't wait to see the retro room in all it's glory. Definitely needs shag carpet, and the room to smell like cigarettes and mildew, then it'll be authentic lol.
The room definitively needs to have a faint smell of cigarrettes.
I don't think the stale cigarette smell is necessary, but it would lend to authenticity.
I would like to see Clint dressed appropriately as well. Polyester suit, long point collared shirt, and chunky gold medallion, and feathered hair.
Shag was already going out of fashion by the early 80s because it was difficult to keep clean and impossible to use any vacuum with the then new rotating brush feature.
@@SchlossRitter still looks cool af though! I wouldn't mind cleaning it often lol
The Bluetooth adapter is the easy way to do it. Personally when I ended up with an older rotary phone I went down the path of hardwiring it into my house and then attaching the other end to a Grandstream ATA that supports pulse dialing, and signing up for a cheap VoIP provider. So my ancient phone works and has its own number, and it only costs me like $2/month.
Nobody ever calls me on it though.
Wow, this video was a real treat! I'll admit I was born a bit late to see these tape-based answering machines in use, so to see one in action was a lot of fun!
Also, your remark about time at 13:33 made me think about something I hadn't really thought about before. I've always announced the date and time when I left a voicemail, because I grew up watching my mother do the same thing. I'd never realized that it was because old answering machines like this didn't have timekeeping mechanisms. It's the kind of thing you never think of until someone points it out to you lol.
It was still a good idea to say the time and date up until answering machines could read the caller ID info because just like with VCRs nobody ever knew how (or remembered!) to set the clock on the answering machine after the power went out!
man this takes me back, didn't have this answering machine but remember when my parents got one for the first time along with a Caller ID machine...it blew my mind as a kid
I don't know what it is about this episodes, but man... does it tickle all the right spots. Mint. Chef's kiss. 10/10. Gonna watch it again!
My grandmother had a Record-a-Call answering machine like this that she used for years, probably into the early 2000s, because she had arthritis so bad that her fingers were short and stubby, so she just kept using it because she was able to slide the switches easily and she never really found one that worked more easily for her, especially since a lot of the digital answering machines had those small, soft, mushy buttons.
It was a slightly different model, though, since I remember hers had a slider that let you choose the number of rings, and that was the other issue with newer machines. She kept it set to 7 rings because it took her some time to get to the phone, and for whatever reason, a lot of machines in the 90s and 00s didn't really let you set the number of rings that high.
This is the sort of machine Columbo would have based an episode on in the 70s
"Oh, just one last thing. What's this?"
*pulls out toy whistle from Cap'n Crunch cereal*
This intro music makes me feel fuzzy inside just like when I was a kid, turning my TV on Saturday mornings in the 90s.
PRICELESS FEELING 😌
Imagine this: you were able to install an answering machine in the 70s-80s-90s as a separate device but NOW, in the era of smartphones, Google forbids you from doing that citing "security concerns".
Bro do you not know how to jailbreak your shit lmao
Google are control freaks
It’s great to see this thing alive today! We had one of these for years growing up, then it became a toy for me to play with once we upgraded and moved into the minicassette age. I still have a box of Celebrity Answering Messages along with a box of old received messages. Hope that retro room is coming along nicely! I may have some tat for you to add…
I love it. This is so cool. I have a pay phone that I want to set up to use with my cell phone. Thanks for this video. Now I know what to get to make it work.
...A pay phone?
@@serenity1378 They're probably going pretty cheap these days.
Dude! This X-link is exactly what I've been looking for! I can finally do dial-up again!!!
Omg what an awesome idea!!! Hook an old Dreamcast up to the net again!
@@fensoxx If that works, that would be amazing. Video idea for somebody.
Unfortunately not. If you have a VOIP a dial up modem won’t work because of the digital compression and artifacts
@@thetman0068 we used to have Comcast voice with our internet at my house and dial-up worked fine
@@thetman0068 that’s too bad. There would be a (very) niche market for some device to allow dial up devices to work again. At least for retro game content creators you’d think.
Edit: I guess you could just get a plain old telephone line but there’d need to be something to call and connect too.
Back in the day, I had a Sanyo answering machine. It functioned in much the same way, but to listen remotely to messages, you had to punch in a two digit code--you were SOL if you weren't calling from a push button phone. The outgoing message tape was also a loop cassette. Had it for years and it worked very well.
My answering machine came with a small battery operated touch pad to carry while travelling in this case, it had all the numbers and even * and # on it. You just held it up to the handset and typed in your code.
I can't believe dial-a-song is still running! I've called it a few times when I remember it. Very cool.
From what I've read, it actually _stopped_ running in 2006 after their last answering machine failure. They brought it back in 2015.
Oh, as far as VOIP goes, it definitely DOES alter the pitch of tones. It was a whole big deal at my last job where trying to “enter _ to reach blah blah” wouldn’t work. I discovered the issue, which the service used to resolve a years long issue for them. Now that I think about it… I should have got a bounty for that! Haha
There are ways to make old phones work on VOIP service, there's an adaptor you have to get, or some kind of device, I forget what it is. I think it converts the VOIP to TTS/pulse.
Hilarious episode. Never thought much about answering machines in the day, just a thing to have.
Monor answering machine anecdote: about a year ago my wife told me that while we were still dating (25-ish years ago) she would call my machine while I was at work (and wasn't supposed to have personal calls) just to hear my voice.
Oh, gosh, that font on brushed silver brings me back! Think we had that on the 📺, and I KNOW it was on the oldest piece of my parents’ stereo equipment.
I think it'd be cool if you gave the number to patreon members and then did Q&As where you sat in the 70s room, probably in a tacky chair while wearing a tacky robe, and played questions that were left on your answering machine.
I think that'd be appropriately lo-fi for LGR.
Linus did that once, but had the entire LTT team answer the phones
Speaking as a Patron, that would be incredible!
Cathode Ray Dude did something similar, but it was for faxing in during his 100k live stream.
As a phone nerd/collector (especially one with an interest in 70s-90s phone stuff like the Design Line) I love this on every level!
If anyone's interested there's two versions of the Xlink, the BT (bluetooth) and the BTTN (blutetooth + landline), the BTTN model can be paired with a device like the Obi 200 ATA that lets you use Google Voice as a free landline (in the US) but normally doesn't work with rotary phones
If you don't need the rotary to tone conversion or bluetooth you can skip the Xlink and just plug phones and answering machines directly into the Obi
24:08 I would imagine there were several frequencies these worked on. There's a sticker on the bottom that says "Frequency 892.5".
The frequency is getting cut off due to the codec that the VOIP provides uses. Use a VOIP provider like Calltronic which use better codecs for modem/fax use.
@@wintersgrass Many VOIP systems compress the audio so much that 'in band signaling' doesn't work very well. Extra features need to be enabled if you plan on using touch tones (or an ancient answering machine remote) in the middle of a call. We went through this issue when we dumped our PBX at work and switched to SIP. People were struggling to enter their conference codes when we used Intercall for conferencing.
I wondered the same thing and checked it out. I got an empirical result of about 891.6-892.8 (just timing 100 cycles), but close enough! One wonders if there's a pot inside to adjust the machine as well. (Clint, you know of the "Gloria" recording from Miscellaneous T, right? There must be giants, it says!)
@@MCMcommunications "Who's 'There May Be Giants?'" "I don't know, Gloria!" "Well, don't blame *me* if the guy's a nut!"
@@Fuzy2K "you could make sense once in a while."
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! Wow, what a great idea. I think I just might want to get an old land line phone now and put it in my house and use the bluetooth link to it... just because. I want to experience that phone ringing in all the rooms once again. Simply BRILLIANT!
Years ago I acquired a Record-A-Call mic and remote tone signaler for what may have been a fancier version of that answering machine, the mic is the same but the remote has a set of dip switches under where yours has a clear window on the bottom and it says to set the dip switches on both the remote and the machine to match, changing the switches adjusts the remote from a simple tone to a modulating tone series that you would long press(play) for some commands and short press to do other tasks up to/or including changing the recorded message while away on vacation or erasing one or all messages. Still got it in a drawer around here somewhere if you are interested in pics of it or the whole remote tone unit itself. Also it's powered by a 9v battery so you might want to check inside your NIB one to make sure it's not leaking!
I laughed so hard at the feedback part! I always enjoy your enthusiasm and experimenting with retro electronics. Looking forward to seeing your retro room when it's ready!
Oh my gosh the message playback was terrifying!! Imagine finding that cassette out of context with no knowledge of this and hearing that. I would think it was cursed for sure!!! Amazing video as always Clint!! I cant wait for the room to be completed hehe
"Believe it or not, Clint isn't at home please leave a message at the beep. I must be out or I'd pick up the phone. Where could I be? Believe it or not I'm not home"
My granddad had this EXACT answering machine!! It was how, when i was just 2 or 3 years old, i learned to read (yes, read) the word "CHASSIS" because I asked him what it meant. My granddad was pretty tech-savvy for the time, he taught me how to type in DOS commands to run Super Solvers on his 386 IBM-clone
Man, you have really captured the novelty of something as bog standard as a tape answering machine. Something so standard to phones today was considered a status symbol back in the day. Totally Strange! Cannot wait to see this and the rest of your planned Retro room.
Beautiful video (as always), I am so happy to watch! Clint you are one of a kind. Thank you so much for those nostalgic, joyful moments!
Back in the 90s when i was a kid, my mom let me put a recording of captain kirk saying "space the final frontier these are the voyages of the starship enterprise. Her 5 year mission to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before!" on our answering machine lol probably pissed so many people off with how long it was having to listen to all that before they could leave a message.
Our first answering machine was from Radio Shack in the late 70s. Wood grain with black and chrome accents With a knob to set the function, and the remote thingy. It also used full sized cassettes, 30 second endless loop for the greeting, and 30 minute standard for incoming messages. It was called a DuoPhone.
@Doug Browning
I remember those from the Rat catalog!
I don't think I've ever seen a dedicated answering machine in use. Growing up my family just didn't use one. We had a beefy cordless phone from the early 90s and it lasted so long that, by the time it needed to be replaced, it was the early 2000s and pretty much every cordless phone had one built in.
I don't think answering machines ever were a thing people had at home here in Denmark. I've never known anyone to have one. Almost every office and clinic had one, many still do. Even after we got digital DTMF service in 1989, it wasn't till the 90s they offered an answering service hosted by the phone company (so you had to call it to listen to it), but so few used it they dropped the service. Even nowadays with cellphones everyone have a voice mail included, but very few bother to set it up or even know how to use it. Maybe us Danes just don't like using voice mail or answering machines, but we've reached the point where people are more likely to send you a text than leave a message on your voice mail when they can't get hold of you
@@thesteelrodent1796 interesting! Yeah these days I don't bother much with my voicemail. Pretty sure it's full actually. People usually hang up and don't leave a message as soon as they hear it so I don't bother with using it. Instead I ask people to text me if I don't answer.
We used an old Yugoslav rotary phone well into the 2010s. I found a microcasette answering machine a while ago while scavenging for old tech, been meaning to try it out lol.
We use a cordless phone now, but it doesn't have an answering machine built in. Never seen one like that...
@@mandarin1257 I love it! And odd. Maybe only the more expensive ones do. I haven't had a landline phone for years so I haven't paid attention to them. I actually do use a setup similar to the one Clint has in this video with an old rotary phone. It uses a much cheaper device called the cell2jack. Sound quality is pretty bad but it's more of a novelty than anything.
My aunt had an answering machine in the '80s -- fake-woodgrained like that, but smaller and a cheaper brand I think.
But my parents never had standalone machines. Both Dad's home and Mom's home had one phone with a built-in answering machine. Mom used one that took either mini- or microcassettes, and Dad had a tapeless one.
Meanwhile I came of age in the 2000s and have never had a landline of my own. I was either using my parents' or others' landlines, or a cellphone.
We got ours in the era of micro cassettes. I remember that little thing driving my mother crazy. She was not, as they say, tech savvy. The announcement pretty much told the world that till one of us kids changed it.
The message you left could be sold to a studio for B or C movies, Clint. I hope you kept that. 😂
Reminds me of the Rockford Files and some of the crazy messages he got.
"Hello. This is the Answerphone company. We are happy to see you are using our machine, now how about paying for it?"
I've got a 1982 Panasonic EASA-PHONE KX-T1505 answering machine hooked up and working at home. It's doesn't have any cool remote functions, but the controls are a bit more electronic, each button and knob setting engages a very satisfying THUNK of solenoids inside to do all the mechanical mechanism switching bits.
There’s no warnings on the package in the 80s, but remember to not eat the silica gel.
Dankpods has conditioned me to always call those "snacks for later"
@@dominateeye is that a new name for tide pods?
@@dominateeye And also "AAA!" batteries.
What a fascinating machine! Interesting seeing the 892.5 frequency label on the underside. That would be the frequency of the tone that its beeper makes. I wonder how many different frequencies they made for different units. I remember in later years after touch tone phones became more common, newer answering machines being advertised with "beeperless remote" function, where the owner just presses some digits to retrieve their messages. That's progress. :)
I knew that feedback was coming and it was even better than expected.
This is actually a dream of mine. Setting up a vintage answering machine in my house in 2022.
My family had this exact answering machine when I was growing up. I recorded the outgoing message on it when I was like 4 or 5, and we left it on there for probably 10-15 years. Never knew it had a remote function though.
Don't forget to erase the messages once you've heard them! Hold the erase button as you put the slider into the REW position.
I wonder what callers thought later on, hearing a kid who wasn't one anymore.
There was a frequency listed on the bottom of the machine. Maybe that is for the remote and they had different frequencies available. Not super secure, but a little bit.... "Secret" tones were enough for AT&T to run their network, so why not an answering machine :D
Lgr definitely up for the “most likely to somehow get phreaked in 2022” award after this one
Yes, and if you look closely, the same frequency is listed on the remote and that’s how they paired them. Not the most secure concept ever… For a more secure method I guess you had to wait a few years until touch tone phones became commonplace and a PIN code entered using the phone’s keypad became the common method to allow for remotely controlling an answering machine.
@@MaxPower-11 should’ve waited til dtmf was dtf
My brother got one of those at that time, 82-83. On his first message he put hawaiian music in the background. It was hysterical. People became very creative with these machines.
Also, Dial-A-Song was amazing! Such an awesome tidbit of knowledge!
As someone who still uses and pays for a landline connection, this makes me happy.
When he had that feedback problem it sounded like he was being murdered in a Sci-Fi horror flick
Unlike some folks, you genuinely appreciate your community. I'm glad I support you. I've watched your vids from back in the day. YOU'RE THE BEST, CLINT!
1:29 The chair!!! Aw man, it does my cold, shriveled heart good too see it there, especially next to that giant console TV 😄 Its like unexpectedly bumping into an old friend after many years 🥲
I laughed my ass off at the horror message you left. Great stuff.
It reminds me of Druaga1's video where he sets up MIDI in Windows 3.1 and he has the volume up *way too loud* and blows out his ears 😆
Imagine telling someone from the 80s that one day we'll all watch someone on the internet set up their answering machine from our phone while in the bathroom.
That message you left was one of the coolest sounding things I've ever heard. It was like you were legit calling back 8n time to the 70's and caused a temporal distortion event
I was always the voice of our family’s answering machine in the 90s. I’m 36 now and it’s still me on my parent’s machine in 2022! Lol I’ve actually never owned an answering machine or had a land line in my adult life.
What a nostalgia trip! We had this exact same model at home back in 80s! I thought it was the most futuristic piece of tech by far-like something out of Blade Runner. Great vid!
Thanks so much!
I never realized They Might Be Giants kinda invented streaming music.
It’s basically the Corey hotline for TMBG fans
The "Dial-a-Carol" concept has been around since 1960. You call in, and they play a Christmas carol at you. The local college still does something similar, but the students who answer actually sing, not just play a 45.
@@CantankerousDave LOL When I read "Dial-a-Carol" the first thing that came to my mind was Carol Burnett 😆
Nostalgia just kicked me in the shin. My dad had a similar one in the late 90s, wood grain, etc... matched our woodgrain walls in the lounge 😂
Thanks for the throwback, Clint.
I absolutely love your profile picture by the way!!
i've been suffering mentally/emotionally for awhile now and this allows me to unclench my jaw and fight off the darkness for 25 minutes. merci beaucoup!
Very cool! I love the "chest phone", very stylish! Also, I would like to use the old phone wiring in my house for an intercom system, that xlink box might do the job.
I remember seeing an answering machine in every house when I was a kid.
In the 80s I never knew anyone who had an snswerphone but they featured so heavily in many TV series of the time. The hero of the show would often listen to a call without picking up or we would hear someone leave a message when there was noone there to answer the call. I always wanted one.
15:29 - That's a good gag.
The feedback message was amazing.
Oh wow, I am in love with that Deco telephone. What a lovely cigar box design. I can imagine some cartel drug boss using it to answer calls.
I can see an 80's Alfred the butler answering that phone in Bruce Wayne's study with it sitting on a desk while Bruce and Dick play chess.
This looks like it would be perfectly at home next to some classic B&O stereo components :-)
For some reason, I read that as "classic BQ stereo" and somehow thought "Yeah, this WOULD look nice at a indoor barbeque place"... Then I realized...
How did I not question that logic in the first place? 😂
I can imagine videos with you sitting in that chair by the fireplace, telling us stories about long forgotten hard- and software... A bit like grandpa... And we all (virtually) sitting around you and listening...
I remember having an answering machine in the 80s as a young girl that had two full size cassette tapes; one for the outgoing message and one for the incoming. We had to explain what it was in the early days. "This answering machine will record your message, but wait until after the beep!" kinda thing. I remember how advanced it felt when we got one years later with just one micro cassette tape.
I can't see how a single-tape answering machine would be able to record more than one message and still play the outgoing message without being reset. I'm guessing that machine used a solid-state recorder for the outgoing message. The small amount of memory for the outgoing message was probably cheaper than a tape mechanism at that point but the minutes of memory needed for recording incoming calls wasn't cheap.
I hate I didn't save some of the tapes from mine.. all the calls from friends, grandparents, etc.
If this didn’t actually exist I’d swear this was purposely built to make the ultimate LGR retro device
Then it might even actually have the integrated bluetooth, just like the clickbait title implied..
So I got CZcams on as background as I airbrush tonight, and for the most part it’s just an extra noise whilst the compressor refills and the hiss of the brush working apart from that one moment, where both airbrush and compressor are quiet and I hear the machine rewinding. In the one single instant I’m back forty odd years going to check my stepndads machine for him when we went over to his place for Saturday evening dinner and movies.
Now that’s nostalgia… thanks Clint.
i set my dad up with one of these 5 years ago with a digital answering machine, thing works great. when hes home all the phones in the house ring and the answering machine picks up like normal (4 rings), and he can pick up any phone and make calls. the newer cordless phones all get the caller id from the cellphone as well and when he leaves he takes his phone with him and he gets normal voice mail service. 100% seamless. we also ported his original home phone line (from 1960) to his cell phone because landline costs are stupid crazy. he loves it.
Oh, boy, that was prime creepypasta material right there: You're gifted a 50-year-old answering machine (or you buy one off of eBay, whatever), but every answer sounds like THAT (anything coherent is stuff you DON'T wanna hear). The worst part is these types of calls are from your own number. I believe there already is a horror film with this exact premise.
That message though... Almost like something from a 70's style horror film... "In the 70s' room... No-one... can hear you... feedback..." Cue 70's synth
In the late '80s, I had a full-size cassette answering machine at college. I discovered that I could remove it and record anything I wanted as my message directly to the tape by just spooling it past the initial signals the answering machine needed. Had a lot of fun with that one and clips from the Doctor Demento Show. :D
I wonder where you get this on their box.
It's just something marvelous that someone took good care of them
VOX literally means voice operation exchange. I learned about in when I got into Ham radio. It means instead of mashing the push to talk button to transmit your voice, when you start talking it transmits without touching anything. Hope that explanation helps.
My grandparents bought a Record-a-Call answering machine in 1978 or '79. They had never owned an answering machine before, and I had to help them set it up. To understand why these machines were so expensive, it helps to know a bit about prior answering machines.
Until the late 1970s, you couldn't just buy your own answering machine, or any other telephone equipment, plug it in and use it. Ma Bell owned all the phone equipment, including the phone wiring in your house, and if you were rich and important enough to own an answering machine, you probably rented it from them, and a phone company service technician came to your house to deliver and install it for you. (That involved screwing wires into an existing phone block on the wall, and, if necessary, splicing in a new phone block somewhere.) Like all phone equipment at the time, the telco's answering machines used proprietary tape media that wasn't user-replaceable, and they were built to last a long time.
My dad's first answering machine was a user-installable model from the early 1970s. It got around the legal issues described above by using something not unlike an acoustic coupler. Its telephone interface consisted of a "crown" that fit on top of a standard desk phone, between the switch hook and the handset. When the phone rang, a sound-operated switch activated the machine, which literally picked up the handset off the hook and "spoke" into the handset via a speaker in the crown. It was supposed to be able to take messages as well, but that feature didn't work very well, so Dad mostly used it as an announce-only machine. It used proprietary tapes that looked like miniature 8-track cassettes, and lasted about as long. Dad tried to repack them when they wore out, but his attempt wasn't successful, and he ended up buying a new answering machine maybe 4 years later. The replacement used a tape loop that ran around the periphery of the machine just inside the cover for the outgoing message, and recorded incoming messages on an internal, non-replaceable reel-to-reel tape. Obviously, neither of these machines were what you'd call smart. Back then, just having the ability to record a phone message was pretty advanced.
The Record-a-Call was one of the first dual-cassette answering machines, if not *the* first. The ability to use compact cassettes in this manner was new technology, which is one reason it was so expensive. That mechanism that could use leaderless tapes over and over again without breaking them was another. So were all those features that you took for granted on your mid-1990s answering machines, such as the ability to remotely check your messages, the ability to pick up any phone in the house and have the machine cut out, the ability to decide to start recording a call in progress and record notes on the fly. Some of those features may have been unique to Record-a-Call machines at the time.
I encountered my first solid state answering machine in 1987, when my roommate bought one. I think he paid less than $50 at a local department store for it. Frankly, it was awful. Anything recorded with it, incoming or outgoing, sounded very muted and fuzzy. I had to record all our outgoing messages, because his voice wasn't strong enough to make a recording that could be understood by a caller. Likewise, many incoming messages were next to impossible to understand. And it could only hold a 10-second outgoing message and 10 minutes worth of incoming messages. It wasn't long before I replaced it with an AT&T brand dual-cassette model. By that time, most dual-cassette models could do what your Record-a-Call could do and then some, although my answering machine used a proprietary endless loop cassette for the outgoing message. (But since the machine was from AT&T, a popular brand at the time, I had no trouble buying some spare OGM cassettes.) I insisted on dual-cassette answering machines until the early 2000s, which was when I first found an all solid state answering machine that sounded good and offered the features I wanted.
I cried laughing when the feedback started happening and it captured your screams and feedback combined. Then you playing it back made me cry laugh harder. Thank you.
it won't be entirely legit without a separate caller i.d. box!
Caller ID was latter