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...

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Beogram 4000 Arrives! First Impressions!

Lucky Day!! Today a Beogram 4000 arrived in my driveway. It is a bit of a project, but came with a pristine MMC20EN cartridge (I am listening to Miles Davis 'Water Babies' right now with it! - Awesome!).

Also the exterior and the hood are in pretty good shape. And a really nice condition platter. Here are a few first impressions:

Nice control cluster (disregard the Sharpie marks under the position indicator for now...;-):

Lovely platter:

























Here comes the sad part: The sensor arm insert is missing and the cartridge mount came off with the cartridge. It was not taken off for shipping and probably took a hit during transport. Actually I did not know that it had a cartridge on there...anyway, now I am really interested in making my cartridge mount replacement part perfect...;-). 

In fact it is interesting to see how B&O designed these first mounts. They were done with flex board, very similar to my approach, and the plastic part was simply molded in a shape that 'bulged' the PCB a bit at the end of the mount to press it into the cartridge contacts. Later designs are based on metal contacts and a rubber sub-structure that also renders the mount contacts flexible. All this makes me hopeful that I really might be able to get this mount replacement part going. Now for the sensor arm insert, well, I guess a 551x might have to bite the bullet and take one for the team. The mighty 4000 has precedence!


A few more impressions...real expert work on the RCA plugs,

and also on the power cord. Did they think this is an electric lawn mower??

All in all, I'd say not too bad! I am looking forward to getting this baby going again!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments and suggestions are welcome!