Beomaster 4400 Type 2419: A Personal Project

Whenever I do a restoration on a Bang & Olufsen audio component I find myself wanting to keep it for myself.  It makes sense seeing how these units we restore are units we also like ourselves here on the blog.

A few years ago I had my own working Beomaster 4400 that I purchased in working order. Since it worked great I decided to leave it as is and just use it until it started to fail.  I got two good years out of it before I started to notice a degradation in performance.  At that point I put it away for later restoration when I had time.

After my last Beomaster 4400 restoration project I was reminded how I liked this receiver so I opened up a spot in my restoration schedule to do one of mine.  Truthfully, I plan to do two for myself.  That is because a few months ago I acquired another Beomaster 4400 unit that is from one owner and looked to be a great restoration candidate.

So I will begin with the latest acquisition then move to the first unit.

Here is how it looks having just opened it up.

It is pretty clean overall. You can immediately tell that this unit was stored well and came from a smoke-free environment. The lenses on the controls are still clear.

There is some sort of black gunk on the metal frame but I should be able to clean that off.

The left and right sides of the rosewood cabinet have small chips. One is still hanging on so that will be an easy repair. The other side is gone so I will have to fashion a matching piece out of some rosewood veneer I have in my shop.

The color on the cabinet is good. It doesn't appear faded so after the repair of the cabinet dings a little sanding and refinishing should make it look new again.

Inside the Beomaster 4400 circuitry looks original as expected. The front controls all operate smoothly (without power applied).

Very nice.

Removing the smaller boards I don't see any signs of burned or broken traces.

Here is the Beomaster stripped down where I will begin work on the restoration.

Here are the three FM modules and the preamplifier removed and ready for recapping.

As clean as this Beomaster 4400 unit is I am hoping that I won't have to dig in to the front panel components like I did on the previous Beomaster 4400 project.

I should be able to do most of the cleaning, solder reflowing and capacitor replacement without much disassembly this time.

The power switch on this unit seems to be in good order so I will only have to attach my arc suppression device.

The previous Beomaster 4400 project used up quite a few of my restoration components for these receivers so I ordered more from Mouser last night and they should arrive tomorrow.