Payphone problems

[awhittle]

Moving at a galacial pace, I've made some headway on my payphone project.
My story so far...
Phone enclosure with working fluorescent light.  So of course I wanted a phone to put in it.
Western Electric phone,
Replacement 36b (I think) pcb
Replacement Microphone.

The phone rings and I hear callers, however when I talk (called myself on my cell   Th so nd cu ts in nd ou t as sp ak.  Anyone have an idea why?

To further cloud the issue, I've since dropped my landline so I either have to drag the phone to a landline or fake it out somehow.  Any ideas on that too?

I'll probably end up selling the whole darned thing so if anyone's interested in a project let me know.

[Mysterioii]

I'm not familiar with your project in general but it sounds like you just have a loose connection somewhere.  Is this a restore on a vintage phone?  (Sorry, not my thing).  Check the ends of all your wiring for loose connections, and if the cords themselves are old you might have broken (or in the process of breaking) wires in the cords themselves.

[Ken Layton]

The wires inside the handset cord are probably going bad from excessive flexing over time. A new handset should fix it.

[TheShanMan]

I got magicjack specifically to be able to activate my payphone. Only thing with that is you might have to flip the sensitivity switch for the phone's ringer since a magicjack doesn't put out as strong of a ring signal as land lines do (since these days people don't have mechanical ringers usually).