Telephone ringing

[bboswell]

I didn't see if and when this had been discussed before, so here goes:

Have you ever noticed that 90% of the time when the telephone rings on the Jack Benny radio show, the sound effect drowns out anything else that is going on at the time?

Now, I collect old telephones, and I have learned that to ring an old-style bell telephone, you turn the crank and it generates a large magnetic field and quite a respectable voltage.

My theory is that the sound effects man had to have the ringer close to the microphone to be able to be heard, but then the magnetic field from the telephone interfered with the mic.

And so the sound of the telephone isn't really overpowering the the actor's in the engineer's mix, but I think we're hearing the interference of the sound effects mic messing with the overall balance of the show. This is consistent with what I think I'm hearing.

Also, the 90% figure might be a little high, it might just stick out to me when it happens, and I don't notice it otherwise!

Any ideas? Feel free to shoot me down!

[Roman]

This is one topic that DEFINITELY is beyond my knowledge or expertise. I loved Jack's routines on the phone, especially the ones with Rochester. How the sound effects worked though, I haven't a clue.

[Jack Benny]

Actually, it's just Mel saying "ring, ring!"

[epeterd]

That's very odd, because I hardly ever hear the phone ringing on the show. It always seems like someone answers the phone but I never heard it ring. Pretty weird.
Peter

[Yhtapmys]

Have you ever noticed that 90% of the time when the telephone rings on the Jack Benny radio show, the sound effect drowns out anything else that is going on at the time?

Now, I collect old telephones, and I have learned that to ring an old-style bell telephone, you turn the crank and it generates a large magnetic field and quite a respectable voltage.

My theory is that the sound effects man had to have the ringer close to the microphone to be able to be heard, but then the magnetic field from the telephone interfered with the mic.

There's no indication an actual telephone was used to make the bell sound. Making a bell ring was one of the basics in my Grade 8 Electricity class. We didn't use a phone. Just a bell hooked to an electrical circuit.

It may have been a case of the mike picking up the bell's frequency better, or simply the engineer not changing the pot on the board after an early effect (like footsteps).

Yhtapmys
"Drive Your Blues Away!"

[LLeff]

There's no indication an actual telephone was used to make the bell sound. Making a bell ring was one of the basics in my Grade 8 Electricity class. We didn't use a phone. Just a bell hooked to an electrical circuit.

When we did a recreation of a show, the SFX equipment we got wasn't an actual phone, but a bell with a circuit and a push-button to ring it.

I have to wonder if it's a matter of the same reason that the old JellO tag was sung so slowly. You'd have to have the bell at a certain volume or it's just going to get lost in the static or make people say, "What was that?"

And people from the midwest and south can tell you that the phone circuit is enough to stun/kill fish, as people used to use the old crank phones, dip the wires in the river, crank the bell, and watch the fish float to the surface. I do not recommend this practice, and prefer to use rod and reel myself.

[Yhtapmys]

I have to wonder if it's a matter of the same reason that the old JellO tag was sung so slowly.

That was probably for the same reason announcers overenunciated in the early days - signals were poor in the smaller markets. 100-watt stations were very common in the 30s.

Yhtapmys
"Drive Your Blues Away!"