Beogram 4004 (5526): A New Arrival from Southern Florida

A while ago I received a Beogram 4004 (5526) from a customer in Southern Florida. The unit was hand delivered. I extracted it from the packing peanuts (not my favorite packing material!...;-) and had a look. This post gives a first assessment of this Beogram before I will go about restoring it.

Once I had it out of the packaging,

it immediately became clear that the hood hinges are cracked. One decided to give out when I opened the hood, and a piece of plastic dislocated:

Unfortunately, this is a frequent issue with Beogram 400x hoods. It happens due to the high stress in this area, while the plexiglass is weakened by the presence of holes for bolting on the hood hinge. I carefully removed the hood and had a look at the other side, and a fine hairline crack is already visible, there, too. So this hood needs to be fixed on both sides.

Under the hood I found an unsecured MMC 20EN cartridge. Miraculously, the cantilever was still present and appears not to be bent much. We will see if this cartridge still can be used for playing records after this ordeal.

Other than the hood, this Beogram is in a pretty nice cosmetic condition. The aluminum panels are fairly pristine

and even the keypad only shows minor use patterns:

Unfortunately, the clear coat on these keypads does not like much being in contact with the acids and fats present on human skin, and so wear patterns occur depending on how much the deck has been used. On this Beogram they are only visible under certain light and view angles, so that is pretty good!

The plinth is also quite nice. The corners are almost pristine on both sides:

A look under the panels revealed that this Beogram seems to be unmodified and in its original condition (original condition is the best starting point for restorations):

After this inspection I plugged the deck in and pressed START. It creakingly came alive and displayed a shrieking platter motor. It proceeded to move to the LP setdown point and activated the solenoid. All very good life signs, indicating that the restoration should be straight forward.