Beogram 4000: New Arrival from Italy

Exciting! Another Beogram 4000 found its way to my bench for a full restoration! TNT brought it over to the US in an amazing three days. I extracted it from the box. It was quite well packed and arrived safely. The exterior of the unit is pretty decent. No damages to the veneer and the hood is absolutely polishable:

The aluminum trim in the back of the hood came off on one side, but that can be fixed with double sided tape. After I opened it up and removed the aluminum plates (which are in dire need of a deep cleaning) I found that the carriage pulley had come off during transport:

Luckily the parts were easily found in the enclosure:

As usual the main key of the control pad extracted itself from the spring that holds it in place. This proves that it is absolutely necessary to tape the keys down for transport. I reinstalled the pad, switched the unit to 110V and plugged it in (keenly watching for potential smoke...;-). Nothing happened, so I pressed 'ON' and the carriage set itself into motion in search for a record. It stopped as expected at the set-down point for 12" vinyls. So far so good. However the solenoid did not engage. I moved the assembly a few times up and down by hand and then tried again, and there was a life sign. Very reluctantly the tone arm lift engaged after a tired motion of the solenoid plunger...

The unit came with the indication that the arm would not lower. It is clear that this unit needs a full clean and rebuild of the solenoid/arm mechanism. Also the solenoid looks strange and may be a non-B&O part. Other than that I found that the RPM switches are oxidized and do not work every time one presses them. The restoration will cure all that. On the good news end a working strobe light can be noted. 

In my opinion one of the intriguing features of the 4000. The position indicator, which is another remarkable design feature, was already broken once and glued back together. This indicates that this unit was in 'expert' hands at some point. The glue job is fairly well, done, though. 

Furthermore, the indicator light bulbs are dead. My SMD LED replacements will fix that for good. All in all I am pretty confident about this project. This Beogram 4000 is a good starting point for a full restoration, which will take it to near-new performance and looks.