Beogram 4004 (5526): A New Restoration Project from Georgia - First Look

A while back I received a Beogram 4004 from a customer in Georgia. He brought it down to Tampa on the way to a concert! A perfect example of 'combining trips'!...;-). In the meantime the Beolover moved to Albuquerque, NM and this Beogram came along, safely packaged in a Beolover shipping box.

After setting up my workbench at the new location I extracted the Beogram and had a first look:

It is in pretty nice cosmetic condition. The hood unfortunately has quite a few scratches

and the hinge areas on both sides show the often encountered stress cracks around the mounting holes:

These cracks could probably be fixed with Beolover hinge patches, and the hood could be polished back to a decent shine, but I would recommend replacing the hood with a pristine new reproduction hood, which became available a few months ago from the beoparts-store in Denmark.

Under the hood this unit has pretty decent aluminum surfaces with only minor dings and scratches:

The keypad is in a fairly good shape, too:

The plinth is almost pristine with very nice corners:

After this cosmetic inspection I removed the aluminum panels and had a look 'below deck':

The unit seems fairly original, except that one of the power transistors had been replaced already:

As is the case with most 4004s at this point in time, the transport lock bushings have completely deteriorated:

After this visual inspection I plugged the unit in and pressed START. The carriage started moving and the platter motor came to life with a noisy rattling. This type of racket usually indicates dry bearings. The carriage proceeded towards the LP setdown point but did not stop there. Instead it continued to the switch at the end of its travel and then returned home. This was no surprise since the light bulb in the sensor arm did not light up. If the bulb breaks the circuit triggers the 'no record present' function, which disables arm lowering.

In conclusion, this deck appears to be a fairly straight forward restoration project and I am confident it can be returned to like-new performance. Stay tuned!