Beogram 4002 (5523): A New Arrival - A First Look

A Beogram 4002 (5523) arrived at my bench for some TLC. It was very well packaged except a creative approach towards securing the cartridge for shipping:

Luckily, all went well and the cantilever did not get damaged. So the first thing I did was to secure the cartridge in one of my recently redesigned MMC cartridge boxes:

I will be happy to supply one of these boxes before shipping a Beogram for restoration. They are also available for the newer style MMC1-5 cartridges.

Here is a first look at the cosmetics of the unit:

The aluminum panels are in good condition but the platter is a bit scratched

and the keypad has a worn START key:

This can be fixed by recoating of the keypad surfaces.

The plinth has one damaged edge:

and some marks in the center of the right side panel:

The Plexiglass hood has the often found 'ice rink' (before the Zamboni appears...;-) appearance:

This can be fixed by removing the top layer of the Plexiglass and then polishing it back to a shiny and translucent appearance.

Under the hood the deck appears in original condition:

After I plugged it in and pressed START, the carriage started moving to the set-down point for LPs and the arm was lowered. This was a good sign, however, the platter motor appeared dead. I checked it with an external power supply and it spun normally. This suggests that there is a fault in the motor drive circuit.

Since this Beogram was shipped without tightening the transport locks, the lock bushings completely disintegrated, which was immediately obvious by the brownish-orange fragments accumulated on exposed areas of the sticky side of the blue tape:

They can be replaced by SLS printed replacement bushings available via the Beolover Shapeways store.

In summary, this unit can most likely be brought back close to new condition, possibly to 'like-new' if a pristine replacement platter and plinth were to be obtained from a donor unit.