Beogram 4002 (5523): A New Arrival from Montana

A little while ago I received a Beogram 4002 (Type 5523) from a customer in Montana for a full functional restoration. He bought this Beogram himself in the 70s! Back to the roots!...;-).

This post gives a first assessment of the unit. A follow up post will give a detailed report of the restoration work.

The unit arrived in a Beolover shipping container safely tucked into an inner box cushioned by charcoal foam inside the outer box. This container usually ensures very little shipping trouble.

I extracted the unit and put it on my bench:

It is in pretty good overall condition with nice aluminum surfaces and pristine plinth corners:

Unfortunately, the keypad coating is damaged on the START key:

We are still working on a reliable and reproducible path to restoring these pads. So at this point we need try ignoring this flaw and hope for a solution in a few months. Luckily it is an easy task to replace the keypad in Beograms. One screw and that is pretty much it.

I removed the aluminum panels and the platter and had a look 'below deck':

The unit seems in original condition with no obvious indication of previous 'creative human interaction'. The best starting point for a successful restoration.

Of course this Beogram shows the usual trouble spots, like degraded transport lock bushings, as is evident from the orangeish fragments distributed throughout the enclosure:

During the restoration process these degraded parts will be replaced with Beolover transport lock bushings.

As usual, the carriage pulley is cracked from the strain the setscrew puts on the plastic part:

Luckily there is a nice precision machined Beolover replacement pulley available!

In summary, this looks like a perfect Beogram 4002 for a full functional restoration that will return it to like-new performance and reliability! Stay tuned for my follow up post.