Have you tried another land line phone to confirm the wall jack is ok? Dial out and talk with someone to confirm they can hear you and you hear them.
If it dials and rings, the line and jack are okay. It’s the same two wires that do everything. The problem is clearly isolated to the microphone or the wiring from it to the base.
How is the handset connected to the base? On some old phones, it’s the same sort of jack as between the base and the wall, making it easy to swap out handsets. You might try that with a known-good handset and/or a known-good base.
If the picture in the OP is of the OP’s phone, it looks like the handset is plugged into the base with a modular jack.
Good to hear…we need more outside craft support here. 
Ever support any Merlin Legend with rotary T/R stations?
In the UK they used to provide tone emitting thingummies for doing phone banking (?) that you could hold up to the microphone of your rotary phone. If anyone could work out what the hell they’re called you might be able to find one on eBay.
I would pay good money for a rotary dial cell phone.
What do you do for zero? I’m not being a smartass, I really wonder. My best friend’s number growing up had not one but two zeros *and *a nine, and it took forever with a rotary phone!
Ten clicks.
Yes, ten, but the more clicks you have to do manually, the greater your chances that they won’t be within the specs. The specs are generous, since the Central Office can’t be sure just how fast or perfect a customer’s dial mechanism is, but it has to have some limits.
Specifically, the US standard is supposed to be 8 to 10 pulses per second, with a 60/40 make/break ratio - that is, connected for 60% of the interval, disconnected for 40% of it. As you note, most switches will accept a large amount of deviation.
Back when rotary dials were common, I remember a few people who were impatient with the speed the dial turned at, and would physically drag the dial back around faster than it was intended to go (often, these people also dialed by sticking a pencil in the hole). That they didn’t misdial all the time is an illustration of the amount of slop in the spec, as well as a testimony to the ruggedness of the mechanism in that they didn’t break it.
Yes! I would do that with my friend’s “6090” number! I’m sure I couldn’t have tapped that accurately.
“Hello, Sarah? Gimme Hazel 4 3145.”
I must respectfully disagree, assuming that the picture in the OP is indeed the phone in question. For one thing, a modular handset cord has a flatter cross-section; for another, the cord is definitely not plugged into the handset.
If it were my phone I’d take the cover off the base (easily done by loosening two captive screws) and test continuity between the tabs in the handset and the corresponding wires in the base, then proceed accordingly.
i would think that the time variation between dragging the dial and that produced by a older weaker spring were allowed in the design of the system. phones were indeed engineered rugged, they were owned by the company and not intended to be replaced or serviced for decades of use.
the phone pictured in the OP does not appear to be modular.
Oh I know about those, sadly Verizon does not use SIM cards.
Damn! I used a rotary phone for the first 20+ years of my life and I never knew that! :smack:
I have installed a few Merlin systems many many years ago. Most of my time was spent in I&M in residential and then about 3 years in Coin, working on payphones. Unfortunately in 2003 I was up a pole and took a 20’ fall, broke my back and that was all she wrote. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss working in the field!