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

A while ago I received a Beogram 4002 (Type 5513, with DC platter motor) for restoration from a customer in Colorado. Today was the moment to put it on the bench. The unit came safely packaged in a Beolover box and so all went well. I extracted the unit from the box:

The hood is pretty scratched, but could be polished on the outside:

Its hinges do not seem cracked, but there are a few marks on the inside of the hood. So even after polishing it will be a bit of a 'place holder' until new reproduction hoods may become available again at the dksoundparts store.

When I opened the hood, I found a liberated solenoid plunger:

This is how the aluminum surfaces look like:

Pretty good, but the keypad has the usual smudges and the coating is work through in some spots:

Luckily this can be fixed with one of Beomazed's reproduction keypad plates.

The plinth wood frame is in decent condition. It has a few dings but the front corners still look pretty sharp:

It needs to be re-glued, however:

The brushed aluminum surfaces are pretty good, albeit the platter has a bit of minor scratching:

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

The unit seems to be in a fairly original condition, but there are signs of 'human creativity'. The carriage pulley, which is notorious for cracking at the set screw, was fixed in a unique way:

I also found a non-standard retaining 'washer' trying to hold the solenoid lever down on its pivot point:

The original washer probably got lost during a repair.

After this visual inspection I plugged the unit in and pressed START. The carriage started sluggishly towards the LP setdown point and found it. As expected, no solenoid action was discernible due to the absent plunger. The platter motor had also come to life and it rattled noisily due to dried out motor bearings.

In summary, all encouraging life signs! This unit is a decent starting point for a restoration.

Stay tuned for my followup post discussing the work done to bring it back to a like-new performance and look!