Beogram 4000: A New Arrival from the UK

A customer from California recently purchased a Beogram 4000 in the UK and had it directly shipped to me. It was reasonably well packaged and arrived in good condition. This post will give a brief assessment of the condition prior to restoration.

This shows the unit as received:

While it is pretty dirty it is in pretty good condition overall. The hood has the typical scratches from careless storage:

While many scratches are deep enough to be felt with a fingernail, it certainly can be polished back to a nice condition. This hood also has an aluminum strip instead of the sometimes encountered flimsy plastic strips. The hinges appear uncracked. The hood hinge shows the usual signs of corrosion:

This can be addressed by sanding the affected area and spray coating with satin black paint.

So far so good! I took the hood off

The aluminum surfaces need a deep clean, but there are no major scratches. Very nice! The plinth is also pretty good, and the corners are in almost pristine shape:

I removed the platter and the aluminum panels and found no obvious signs of previous 'human creativity', always a plus for a smooth restoration process:

As usual the carriage pulley had come off during shipping:

But luckily the carriage was secured during shipping preventing the carriage from moving about and breaking the red position indicator. It is in good shape:

Before plugging the unit in to check its vitals, I had to address the impressive UK plug configuration:

It seems a previous owner needed an on/off switch! I replaced all this with a standard US plug

and then switched the voltage selector to 110V and plugged it in. After pressing start nothing happened. As found frequently in the 4000, the fuses had deteriorated:

One had a cracked housing and the other seems to be OC. Unfortunately, the plastic cover of the fuse box is also cracked in this unit and will need to be replaced with a spare. I replaced the fuses with two new slow 500mA(T) fuses (the manual prescribes 250mA for all voltage settings, but in my experience 250mA is a bit low for running an AC motor Beogram at 110V, which doubles the current compared to running it in Europe on 220V). After pressing ON again the strobe light came on

(which is excellent news) and then the carriage started moving sluggishly towards the LP setdown point. There, the solenoid tried to lower the arm but hardened lubricants prevented the mechanism from fully engaging. At this point I pressed OFF and the carriage returned home. It is a good idea with the 4000 (or early 4002s) not to run it if the solenoid motion is obstructed, since the solenoid current only gets lowered via a solenoid activated switch when the solenoid plunger is fully extended. If that does not come to pass, the solenoid continues drawing maximum current, which can cause it to burn up. This shows some of the solenoid activated switches:

They are corroded as usual. Something that will need to be addressed. There are about 20 switches of this type in the 4000, and they are vital for its operation. It is usually one of my first tasks to get them working reliably since most operational issues can be traced to one or more switches not working reliably.

In summary, this Beogram 4000 is a pretty good starting point for a restoration, and I am convinced that this unit can be returned to an almost-new condition.