Beogram 8000: Last Beogram 8000 Project of 2017

An original owner of a Bang & Olufsen 8000 system from the eighties has sent me his Beogram 8000 and Beomaster 8000 components for restoration. These units are in very good shape but with some deterioration due to time in storage.

I am going to start with the Beogram as the Beomaster restoration is much more involved. Plus I will be able to spend time listening to the restored Beogram while I work on the Beomaster.

Here is the Beogram 8000 as I received it.

The rosewood, veneer trim is coming loose all around the frame. This can be fixed by carefully removing the veneer, cleaning off the old contact cement residue then gluing the trim back on.

I removed the top platter so I could loosen the lockdown screws of the floating suspension.

The next step is to open the Beogram up into its service position. This can be done with the dust cover and tonearm compartment cover in place but I prefer to carefully remove the lid assembly and store it away while I do the restoration. If the dust cover is out of the way it can't be accidentally damaged.

After disconnecting the three suspension spring clips I can open the Beogram cabinet.

Now I can start pulling out the various assemblies to work on them.

Typically at this point I am looking at replacing the tach disc on the small platter hub. The plastic printed tach disc is usually falling apart but this one is pristine.

This tach disc appears to have a lot of life in it. It will be up to the owner whether he wants to switch to the metal disc now or wait until this one starts to deteriorate. It is still something to see a perfect original.

There is a little bit of rust forming at the front part of the cabinet. That can be sanded clean and spray painted.

Here is the empty cabinet shell after the components have been removed.

I will store it a way along with the dust cover assembly for safe keeping.

Finally here are the assemblies removed from the Beogram that will have the bulk of the restoration work performed.

When I first started looking at this Beogram I noticed something was wrong with the tonearm. It was a little out of alignment and typically that just means the spring clip on the tonearm pivot needs to be adjusted. However, this tonearm was not responding to the spring clip. Something appeared to be broken.

A closer examination revealed that the outside pin of the tonearm pivot rod is missing. At some point in this Beogram's life the pin was broken.

Here you can see that the inside pin of the pivot rod is still intact.

This specialty part would be difficult to reproduce I think. Luckily I don't have to deal with that as I have exactly one spare Beogram 8000 tonearm left that I can get a replacement part from.

Here is the broken part after removing it from the tonearm assembly.

Note: The delicate Beogram 8000 phono wires pass through the tonearm pivot assembly and are right there where the repair work on this pivot rod is performed. Special care must be taken to not let the tonearm assembly get away from you and break a phono wire. That would be a huge pain to fix.

Here is the replacement pivot rod.

Here is the Beogram with the new pivot rod in place.

I will have to come back and tweak the adjustment screws on the tonearm assembly later when I get the electronic portion of the Beogram completed.

One thing I was anxious to take a look at on this Beogram 8000 was the tangential arm drive spindle nut. The last two Beogram 8000 units I have restored had broken spindle nuts...and so does this Beogram.

The break on this one isn't as bad as the previous two Beogram units. A repair is still necessary though.

I checked the usual places to search for the broken piece of plastic off the spindle nut. Unfortunately I am not able to find it.

So...no broken piece of plastic for a repair attempt. Believe it or not I am actually glad. Since the other two Beogram 8000 projects demonstrated this problem Beolover went to work on creating a replacement part. He has recently provided me with a few candidates to evaluate and I am expecting one of them to be the solution here.

Beolover sent me two metal candidates and three plastic printed ones. The replacement candidates differ in their inside diameter. The spindle nut needs to fit tight enough where there is no slop but not too tight to restrict movement.

Before I can run some real tests on the new part I have to work on the electronic part of the restoration. That is the next step.