Amplifing telephone lines

[wood]

I am wondering if I can amplify the the sound from a telephone through a tuner and equalizer to compansate for my hearing loss. I have a telephone amplifer device now but it does not allow for tone control or right left balance control for a head set with a microphone.
There are some nice units on the market but they are very expensive and I have a couple of amplifiers and equalizers around the house that I could put to use. I assume it is not just a matter of attaching the pairs to the inputs of the amplifiers. Also I am on the Canadian side of the border if that makes a difference for the telephone wire pairs.

Thanks.

[JeffeVerde]

Here's a useful page on telephone specs - http://www.epanorama.net/links/telephone.html

By design, telephones have a pretty low fidelity signal (in the range of 150-3k Hz), so trying to equalize may not gain you anything.

Commercially made amplifiers are available, as well as devices with line level out to plug into other audio equipment. Another option would be to put a fax/modem card in your computer (many include software to turn your computer into a full-fledged telephony system with voice menus, etc). You could then plug headphones into your sound card and use the audio software of the sound card - or run from the line-out of your sound card into the line-in of what ever other audio eqpt you want to use.

[dkerr]

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/en_CA_ON/57933.details

That is one phone that bell canada sells, but may be available elesewhere.

What you want it to increase sound level, but at the same time keep the clarity and noise level down, some amplifiers will increase sound level, but not necessary maintain the clarity or keep noise level down, amplifying sound without keeping the undesireables down really doesn't help you.

There are a few out there that do a good job but as you say they can be expensive. So you have to look around, to try to get something descent that is not too bad when providing necessary amplification while maintaining clarity but keeping the noise level down.