Beogram 4000: A New Arrival from Australia

I recently received a Beogram 4000 from a customer in Australia. Aside from having been packaged with the smallest packing peanuts I every encountered (what a mess!...;-), it arrived in very good condition. This post will give a first assessment of the unit.

This shows it as extracted from the packaging:

This Beogram 4000 came with a pretty nice hood. Not too many scratches and a decent aluminum trim. Also the hinge areas of the plexiglass seem intact. Definitely a candidate for keeping and polishing.

Under the hood it also looks very good. Almost no damages to the aluminum surfaces and a really nice platter. The plinth is also very nice. Perfect corners:

I removed the aluminum panels and had a look:

It looks like it is in mostly original condition. No glaring signs of 'previous creative human interaction', always a good starting point for a restoration. The precious red carriage position indicator is also still intact:

Very nice! A look at the motor indicates that this is an earlier version 4000 with a pulley that does not have  integrated belt 'guard rails'. They are 'external' and bolted to the mounting posts of the motor:

They are actually not needed due to the slight crowning of the pulley, and basically serve the purpose that the belt stays on the pulley during transport (at least that is my theory...;-). 

This unit came without a power plug installed, so I put an American plug on it and switched it to 110V. Then I plugged it in. On the positive side the strobe light is functional (the one-sided appearance is a camera artifact due to the fact that the light oscillates in sync with the grid frequency), 

but the carriage motor seems very weak and it is not able to drive the carriage. Also the AC platter motor makes strange rattling noises. I did a quick check with the oscilloscope, and it seems the motor voltage cannot be regulated and is much too high. So I quickly unplugged the unit and we will need to see where these issues will lead me during the restoration.

But overall I think this Beogram 4000 is an excellent starting point for a restoration due to its nice cosmetic condition. Technical issues can typically be fixed.