Making your own Butt Set

My beautiful Butt Set broke on me while on site one day and I had to make one on the fly to get the job done this is what I did....

To make your own Butt Set, Linemans Headset, or Beige Box you will need:

A land line phone (not a cordless phone)
Two alligator clips
Soldering Iron and Solder
Scissors or wire cutters

Remove the cord from both ends of the phone.

I prefer to use the straight cord with the RJ11's and not the curly cord with RJ11's. It just gets all tangled and creates an unruly mess.

Cut one end of the cord and peel back the vinyl/plastic coating exposing the wires bare with the scissors or wire cutters.

Split open the wire end/open end of the alligator clips so you will have room to drop solder onto the wires and have a clear view of what you are doing. Scrap the open end of the clip with your Scissors to remove any coatings that are put on the clip at the manufacture leaving bare metal to bare metal connection between the wire and clip.

Place the Green wire onto the end of the alligator clip and drop a little bit of solder on it making a clean connection. Let it cool.... Be careful the clip connection is delicate and can break easily.

Now do the same with the Red wire.

Color code is not really an issue just use two wires from the cord and solder them onto the alligator clips. I try to keep them color coordinated for detail and simplicity. These will be connected to the posts later for call outs.

Now that the clips have been added to the wires plug the other end into the phone set. Make sure the phone is on Tone not Pulse.

You now have a working Butt Set and to test it you can either go to a 66/100 block, open up your phone Biscuit or go to a NID splitter and connect the one clip to one post and the other clip to the other post and make calls.

I didn't go into great detail or add pictures to this because Butt Sets can be used illegally. If you have any type of Telco experience you will understand this tutorial without any further explanation.