Beogram 4004 (5526): A New Arrival from Illinois - Initial Assessment

I recently received a Beogram 4004 from a customer in Illinois for a full functional restoration. This post gives an initial assessment of the unit. A forthcoming post will discuss the restoration work performed on this Beogram.

This shows the deck as extracted from the box:

It came with a MMC 20CL cartridge in its original box. The hood is scratched and has a few marks on the inside, which limits what could be done to restore it. Inside scratches are very difficult to remove since it is impossible to polish all the way to the edges. Sadly, the reproduction hoods at the Beoparts-shop are still not restocked, i.e. the best course of action may be to simply live with this hood and then replace it when the new holds are available again.

I removed the hood:

The aluminum surfaces are pretty good. The platter has some marks, but not too bad. The keypad has some signs of use, but still looks pretty decent:

There are some marks on the arms cover:

They often can be reduced or cleaned away. We will see...

The plinth has still nice corners

but unfortunately there is some significant damage to the veneer on one side:

Luckily, there are now very professionally reproduced CNC machined wood frames available, i.e. this could be remedied to a perfect like-new look.

I removed aluminum plates and platter and had a look below deck:

The unit looks original, which is usually the best starting point for a functional restoration.

One of the platter motor wires is damaged, looks almost like something chewed on it:

And someone beat me to installing a new metal carriage pulley. This one is machined from brass:

Looks pretty! Beolovely!

I plugged the unit in and pressed start. The platter motor came alive with a rattle and the carriage started moving towards the LP setdown point and found it. All good signs!

Unfortunately, the STOP key and end switch (ES) both do not seem to work, indicative that there is an electronic fault. The only way to drive the carriage back was using the > key, which means that the H-bridge is o.k. We will see what is going on when I get to restoring the boards of this Beogram.

In summary, this should be a fairly straight forward restoration. Now, if we could only get the new reproduction hoods going again! Stay tuned for the post about the restoration.