Featured Post

Beolover SyncDrive: DC Platter Motor Replacement for Beogram 4002 and 4004 (Type 551x and 552x)

Late Beogram 4002 and the 4004 (Types 551x and 552x), which have DC platter motors instead of the earlier synchronous AC motors usually suff...

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Beomaster 6000 Quad: First Contact

I finally found a Beomaster 6000 4-Channel (2702 Model) on ebay. The usual seller description implied not working and 'have not the right cables to test'...very 'funny'. This usually means someone messed with it and was not able to get it to work. In this case my B&O addiction in combination with the rarity of this model in the US won and I put a high bid in. The exterior is not too bad, but there are a few scuffs on the metal panels and especially on the frequency dial, as well as on the plexiglass cover. Well, I figured, better learn to work on one that is not so perfect, and then get a perfect one to serve as "beolover's masterpiece"...;-). So here we go: This is how it looked out of the box:


There is not much information about the technical aspects of this Beomaster out there except an excellent thread on Beoword.org by Geoff, who heroically fixed one up and let the world know how it went. Reading this post a couple years ago immediately made want one of these beasts, and try to cut my teeth on it...;-). His issues with the output transistors suggested not to turn the Beomaster on before having had a good look inside. Here is how I opened it up:
I followed the advice on the bottom:




























I removed the bolts marked B (and A...not sure why they labeled them differently, they need to come off to be able to remove the wood trim). Here we go:





















The bolts have two functions: To hold the trim to the enclosure, and hold the enclosure together. this means, that at this point, the top parts of the enclosure are loose, and one needs to hold the housing together when turning the Beomaster around after this step.
The final thing to do is to remove the nut that secures the frequency dial shaft in its bearings. I was a bit confused about this. Geoff sent me some advice (thank you very much!) and I forged ahead. This shows the nut in detail:




























I used flat nose pliers to turn the nut while holding the dial on the other side against the turning motion. The nut came off easily, but then I was in trouble:
The dial came out and I slowly lowered it from underneath the housing (the Beomaster was hanging over the edge of my work bench for this procedure, so I could turn the nut from above and get the dial out from below). Unfortunately, the pulley that advances the string that moves the frequency indicator tape also emerged. Here is a picture:





































The pulley is the brass part, and I think it is supposed to stay on the bearing as shown here as part 158 in the service manual:




























Now I turned the Beomaster around, and removed the top parts, i.e. the control panel, the plexiglass cover, and the heatsink cover (after removing the four screws on the back and the two hex (2mm head) screws that hold it near the push buttons). The control panel cover is permanently attached by wires, but can be flipped out towards the front. This shows the state of affairs after removing the panels:


























This is a close up of the frequency dial area where the pulley came out:




























It is obvious that this is not how it should be where the pulley is clearly still seated in the bearing (the part in the center of the picture between purple capacitor pulley and capacitor to the right). Geoff sent me this pic from his Beomaster 6000:





































Obviously his pulley is in place and actually exerts some tension on the string while staying straight. Well, that is what one gets from ebay. I will need to deal with this later.
I will post more about my initial inspection in the near future.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments and suggestions are welcome!