Beogram 4004 (5526): A New Arrival from California

A customer in California who already bought some Beolover parts for his Beogram 4004 (5526) recently decided to send me the entire unit for a restoration. Unfortunately, it arrived with a bit of damage due to sparse packaging. I can only recommend watching our Beogram 400x packaging videos on the 4002 and 4000 pages listed on the right. So far, we never had shipping damages with the packing technique outlined in the videos.

Here are a few first impressions of this 4004:

This is how it looked after I took it out of the box:

The RPM panel was not taped down and therefore it liberated itself and unfortunately caused a few minor scratches on the keypad:

I think one could still recover from this damage and restore this pad to a fairly pristine state. Another area with issues is the tonearm:

It is missing its mounting screws. This Beogram was also shipped with a fairly new looking Soundsmith SMMC 20EN cartridge on the arm without much protection except a plastic tube and some bubble wrap:

Miraculously, this cartridge may have survived the dangling RPM panel and the loose arm:

The cantilever seems still straight, but I would need to do a few measurements to see if it is indeed undamaged. There are a few more cosmetic issues around the unit. One is the broken off aluminum trim on the left side of the hood:

Another is a crack in the veneer of the plinth on that side:

The platter also has a few marks:

There is nothing one can do except finding a better platter. On the positive side, this Beogram has very nice plinth corners at the front:

Under the hood I found a mostly original set-up

except that the Beolover tracking sensor light source has been already installed:

Due to the condition of the carriage/arm I did not turn the unit on yet, but it was immediately clear that the platter motor has issues. It can only be turned with some force, indicating that the bearings need attention at a minimum. 

So in summary, this unit is in a bit of trouble, but could still be returned to a pristine state if a better looking platter and hood with intact trim could be procured and the keypad would be restored.