My restoration of the Beogram 4004 that I was restoring in the last few weeks has come to an end. I procured a near-pristine platter, a nicer looking arm cover, as well as a nearly new looking keypad and installed them. I also added springs to the hood screws that prop them up when the hood is taken off. This makes it much more pleasant to install the hood. They often get lost when people open up the turntable and then forget to put them back in when they built things back together. I sourced them from McMaster. Here are a couple impressions:
this is where the springs belong:
I also fixed the cracked veneer at the back of one of the sides of the plinth:
I used a bit of Alene's Tacky glue and a carpenter's clamp to get things back together:
Almost like new:
Beolovely!
On to the final adjustments. I adjusted the tracking sensor feedback
and then moved on to the arm lowering limit:
When the arm is down, the needle should miss the lower parts of the platter ribs by a mm or so to avoid calamitous events should the record detection system ever fail (due to a dead photosensor, for example). Then it was time to calibrate the tracking weight:
And then, finally, it was time for a first test drive! I selected a recently acquired Dave Brubeck record "Angel Eyes" on the Columbia label (CL2348). I admit, I partially bought it for the cover during one of my strolls through local vinyl stores...;-). This is an impression of the finished Beogram and the angel eyes:
A very nice album, well suited for casual listening on a Sunday afternoon...The Beogram performed admirably, and it may finally be time to send it back to its owner!
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