Hello

I would like to record conversations from an analog phone on my Samsung cell.
A suction cup mag pickup does not work with a cell phone; it's not even recognized.
Any ideas anyone?

 

A mag pickup gives a signal of only a couple of Milli Volts, maybe too low for recording on a cell phone. Try using a transistor amplifier with a gain of about 10 and feed the output to the mic input of the cell phone.

 

The inductive pickup may well work directly but with a good chance of producing more hum than signal. If you are not using a purpose-made adapter to connect a microphone to the mobile phone, you a not connecting it—your are shorting the input.

An inductive pickup will have a TS (Tip Sleeve) ⅛” (3.5mm) plug, this provides a monoaural output connect across the tip and sleeve. The phone has a TRRS (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve) jack, and the microphone input is connect to contacts in the jack the mono plug shorts.

 

Aside from the connection issue and the low output issue there is also the probability that the phone may not have enough of a magnetic field to work with one of those pickups. And some phone nandsets actually have a separate coil to provide a magnetic field for some hearing aids to sense. So you might need an amplifier with a much higher gain, possibly 100 or even several hundred. And a low-frequency cutoff above 100 Hz.