Beogram 4002 (5513): A First Look (What a Packaging Mess!)

I recently procured a Beogram 4002 (5513) from ebay for a customer. The unit was advertised as in very good cosmetic condition and it came with a new Soundsmith SMMC20 EN cartridge. I came to terms with the seller and after payment was made, I encouraged her to watch my 'how to ship a Beogram 4002' video. Well, this is what arrived: A huge crumpled box with a lot of outside damage due to a lack of internal 'stuffing':

What I found sloshing around inside among a random assembly of packaging materials was a second box, so at least my video had some impact!

My hope to find the unit in decent condition went up at that point. I discarded the packaging materials (peanuts are definitely a menace! they should be prohibited!) and extracted the internal box. Inside I found a big wad of bubble wrap and styrofoam corner pieces - pretty good!:

And a road sign to the cartridge:

I like it when people have a sense of humor...;-)

After removing the bubble wrap I found a pristine Beogram 4002!:

The cosmetic condition of this unit is pretty much as good as it gets. Even the keypad is pretty good, except the usual smudge on the start key. The hood has the usual scratches but it seems to be un-cracked and the aluminum trim is still o.k, i.e. it can be restored.

A look under the hood showed an original condition unit without any obvious signs of 'human interaction'...always a good starting point for a restoration:

I plugged it in and pressed START...no response! I checked the fuses and found one of them blown:

Never a good sign, but, what the heck...I put in a new fuse and tried again. It did not blow, that is the good part, but the motor came on instantaneously. This means the start circuit has an issue...probably a blown diode. The motor made quite a ruckus, a clear case for an oil infusion of the bearings.

Aside from this control system issues all I found was degrading transport lock bushings:

Not surprising...all orange ones are gone at this point in time. On the positive side this deck already has the metal cabinet guiding washers, i.e. I will not need to replace those. In summary, it looks like that this deck can be restored to a near-new condition.

So far so good! I had followed the sign to the cartridge and found this:

The SMMC20 EN even came with an original B&O tracking force gauge:

I extracted the cartridge and tested it on the Beogram 4002 (5503) that I just completed:

I put on George Benson's masterpiece "Beyond the Blue Horizon" on the CTI label (CTI 6009).

I really like "So What" on this record. Ron Carters sparse bass lines are just great in contrast to George Benson's elaborate guitar work...Pure vinyl bliss! Check it out on YouTube if you are into jazz. I am happy to report that the Soundsmith cartridge proved in good condition as promised, and my Beomaster 6000 4-Channel produced a happy clear output from this cartridge. Very nice! This is Beolove!