Beogram 4002 (Type 5513): A New Arrival from Florida - First Assessment

Last year I received Beogram 4002 (5513) for restoration from a local customer. Personal delivery is hard to beat when it comes to safely transporting a Beogram. This unit is in a fairly nice condition. This shows it as I received it:

The hood is almost unscratched. Unfortunately, one of the typical cracks in the hinge region has been developing:

But since the crack has not completely formed yet, this is an excellent candidate for the application of  Beolover hinge patches to stabilize and strengthen this area. The alternative is of course a new hood, which have become available recently. I removed the hood and put it away safely. The aluminum surfaces are in an almost excellent condition. There are some minor dings, but nothing major:

The keypad has the usual smudges from using it. 

This unit came with the cartridge installed, but at least the protective cap was put on, which saved the cantilever during transport.

I removed the cartridge and secured it in a Beolover MMC storage box:

A closer look at the plinth corners revealed that they are in excellent shape:

I removed the aluminum panels and the platter and had a look inside:

It looks fairly original, except for the installation of a monstrous RCA cable:

I will never understand why there is this desire to have these ultra thick cables installed on a turntable. The currents produced by an average cartridge are in the uA range, and so resistance is of secondary importance. 26 or 28 gauge wires have plenty of current capability for this application, and the cable becomes so much more pliable and easy to route and install. Shielding is much more important for phono signals due to their weakness. This is why I prefer the original B&O DIN cables over any RCA setup. The original cables are of excellent quality and have a full wire mesh shield around the signal wiring. They do not make them anymore like this! It is virtually impossible to find such cables nowadays. RCA cables usually use the signal return as shield. That works, but is a lower grade approach to shielding.

A look at the transport locks revealed that they are of the 'orange' type, which usually has degraded at this point in time. So they will need to be replaced.

After this visual inspection I plugged the unit in, and pressed START. The carriage started moving and the platter motor started noisily running (indicating dry motor bearings). The carriage then passed by the LP setdown point and continued to the end of travel switch, which then initiated a return home to base. On the initial inward travel the deck switched to 45 RPM. This means the carriage position sensor is working properly, i.e. missing the setdown point indicates some issue with the record detection mechanism. We will see what needs to be done to fix this issue.

In summary, though, this Beogram is an excellent starting point for a full restoration to like-new performance and looks.