Beogram 8002: New Arrival

Today I started looking at a Beogram 8002. The original owner had the original B&O shipping box and was able to hand deliver it to me. That is always a bonus when shipping can be avoided.

This Beogram 8002 is reported to have some issues with the initial tonearm set down position and play time (especially when cued forward on a record). There might also be some cosmetic work needed and possibly the usual restoration updates on these turntables at this point of their life.

Time to inspect this unit and see what state it is in.
The Beogram was properly packed and the suspension was locked down.

Lifting the cover I found the top platter to be in exceptional condition. It has been well taken care of.

Removing the platter and its packing material I found the first odd thing with this unit. The front suspension spring has an additional washer and some glue. I am not sure why that was put there. Obviously this unit has been worked on before.

The inside and back reveal the dust cover and tonearm compartment lid have also had work. The lids are in good shape overall but they don't fit quite right. Looking at the back I can kind of see why. There are attachment screws added (red arrows in the photo) to keep the Beogram cover on. I am not too surprised by this. As much as I personally like this model of Beogram it does have a design weakness when it comes to the lid. While it looks great the lid originally attaches to the Beogram chassis using plastic tabs (yellow arrows in the photo). These often break off over time resulting in a dilemma of how to attach the dust cover. The choice of screws makes sense but there is some problem here with the final alignment of the lids.

Another problem with the dust cover is the black plastic cover (blue arrow in the photo) for the dust cover's spring hinge is missing. There are glue remnants so tabs probably broke off the original.

The original black plastic cover on the dust cover lid hinge looks like this.

I might have a spare in my parts bin or maybe this is a new candidate for a Beolover 3D part.

For some reason the control panel was loose already so I took a peak inside.
Inside I can see that the three larger power supply capacitors were already replaced by someone. That makes sense as that is a typical problem. When the repair was done it was probably much earlier than the present so a full recapping of the electrolytic capacitors was not performed. The top part of the following picture shows this Beogram power supply section of the main board. The lower part of the picture shows what an original state main board looks like.

Now that I had a chance to look over the Beogram I decided to give it a spin. This Beogram came with an MMC2 cartridge mounting on the tonearm and a SoundSmith SMMC3 spare cartridge. I will check out both cartridges while it is on the bench.

First though I had to set the tracking force as the slider had slid up to the maximum 2 grams of tracking force. The MMC2 should be able to track at 1 gram so I adjusted it.

Using a test record I check the Beogram with the already installed MMC2 cartridge. My QA400 audio analyzer showed activity on both the left and right channels but as the owner reported, the Beogram would suddenly stop playing. I pulled out the black panel in the tonearm compartment so I could observe the tangential arm assembly tracking sensor module. The tracking sensor lamp was illuminated so that check is okay. Next I removed the top platter again so the tonearm would lower into blank space as if a record was present. By gently nudging the tonearm towards the center of the turntable I simulated the tonearm moving inward as if playing a record. I could see the tangential arm motor turn to keep up with the movement.

So the usual quickie tests looked good but the turntable had exhibited faulty tracking. I put the platter and test record back on and tried a track half way in on the record. Quickly I noticed the stylus and cantilever of the MMC2 bend inwards with the tonearm not moving so I raised the arm and stopped play. That looks suspiciously like a cartridge problem.

I switched to the SMMC3 cartridge which is obviously a much younger cartridge. I pressed the play button and observed the Beogram play the test record from start to end where it lifted up and returned to standby position as expected.

Here is a picture of the SMMC3 cartridge test. You can see the tracking sensor lamp illuminated underneath.

It is possible then that this project will be a quick clean, lubricate and service manual check. I will need to test the suspect MMC2 cartridge in one of my own Beogram 8002 units to double check. The service manual checks should expose any other hidden problems. It does appear that the tonearm height may need checking. I also need to find out what is wanted regarding the cosmetic problems with the lid alignment.