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This is a follow up to my recent post about the redesigned Beogram Commander remote control board, which now works in both (DC-motor) Beogr...

Friday, March 20, 2015

Beogram 400x: Cleaning and Re-lubricating the Tone Arm Lift Mechanism

The Beomaster 4002 (5513) that I am currently restoring exhibited the usual issues with the tone arm lift mechanism: The mechanism occasionally failed to lift the arm up in time before the carriage started moving back (scratch & ouch!) to its home position after pressing the 'Stop' button, or at the end of the record. Also, the relay sometimes clicked before the arm was completely lowered. All this pointed towards time-hardened lubricants in the lift mechanism. The cure for this type of behavior is to take the mechanism apart, clean the old lubricants out and re-lubricate it with a suitable grease. I use a silicone grease. This type of grease is well-suited due to its generally non-corrosive behavior, its compatibility with rubber and plastic parts, and its long-term stability.
The restoration process is straight forward, but requires a bit of insight into the mechanism. For this reason I took the opportunity of this restoration to add a short video about the process to my Beogram 400x YouTube playlist. The video also shows how to adjust the arm lowering time to achieve precise coordination with the output relay activation. Here it is:

3 comments:

  1. I LOOOOOVE that I just found your blog. I just bought upgraded all of my compenents in my Hi-Fi system except for my Beogram 4002 because I just love it. And, honestly, it still outperforms many of the TTs out there. My quesions is on the track that the tone arm mechanism moves across. I noticed a few months ago that it started making a noise toward the middle of the movement. If I'm playing a record and the arm is moving slowly, I don't hear the noise. But, if I use the buttons to send the arm to the center and return it to home, it makes a chewbacca noise about 2/3 toward the center. Like a little chattering. Can I just lube up the bar that the mechanism moves across?

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  2. I have done this to my 4002 (5511) And would like to underline that it is very importent to ensure that you have the propper ammount of grease inside the damper cylinder. The grease is supposed to seal the gap between the piston and the cylinder wall. If this is done unevenly or if you use to little greese, it might cause the piston to catch the innside of te cylinder wall.

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Comments and suggestions are welcome!