OK, the good news is I found out I just needed a phone hooked up, I did not need dial tone. I thought it was going to require that I call in and it answer, but you can just have a phone hooked up.
So I re-patched my old panasonic wireless (but wired to the closet) phone into the M1G and was able to record. Took about 20 tries holding a cell phone playing a ringtone and trying to hit record and stop at the right time, but got a lousy quality ring, but better than the spoken word. Maybe usable, waiting for wife's opinion.
I did get an LED doorbell button to work fine, didn't use a resister (couldn't get one inside with the LED, and couldn't find a combination that seemed to work in parallel or series with it). The M1G seems to think the LED is an EOL resistor though, and set on that setting it works fine (probably not the way Elk intended, but fine).
Just wish I had a better quality tone for the bell. Well, that, and a money trained to go pull the wire for me -- it's HOT in the attic in the summer in SW Florida.