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

I recently received a Beogram 4002 (Type 5513, with DC platter motor) for evaluation. My customer wanted to know whether the unit could be brought up to a functional state on a budget, or whether he should sell it to the Beolover instead.

This shows the unit as extracted from the packaging:

It has pretty decent aluminum surfaces. The hood has the usual scratching but no obvious cracking around the hinges, so could be potentially polished and returned to a decent state. The wood plinth probably should be replaced with a new CNC machined frame if a pristine look is desired. The left corner could be re-glued

but the right corner is chafed at the bottom:

The keypad has the usual use traces:

This could be fixed with a new reproduction keypad plate.

I removed the hood

and the aluminum plates and platter:

Below deck this unit seems largely original. A visual inspection revealed missing hood bolt springs:

Also the transport lock bushings are degraded as usual as is evident from the many orange plastic fragments found throughout the enclosure:

Likewise the plastic plinth guidance washers are gone:

Another plastic part failed, too: The carriage position sensor housing has lost one of its legs. It is still hanging on due to it being also glued down with double sided tape:

This should probably be addressed by installing a Beolover Carriage Position PCB for Beogram 4002 and 4004. This recently made available board represents a modern redesign of the carriage position detection circuit using a monolithic IR photo-interrupter whose signal is cleaned up and shaped by an opamp in combination with a Schmitt trigger. This alleviates the sometimes tricky implementation/adjustment of new sensors and/or LEDs on the original board.

Then it was time to plug this unit in and press start for the first time. I could not help noticing the mouse bites on the power cable:

It always amazes me that rodents would prefer nibbling on plastic insulation instead of venturing out and finding a nut or something else that is nutritious and tasty! They must have a different worldview!...;-).

I pressed START and the carriage started sluggishly moving towards the LP setdown point, which was found and the solenoid engaged. All good signs. After disassembling, cleaning and re-lubricating the carriage mechanisms should work o.k. again.

The platter motor ran pretty noisily, also nothing out of the ordinary. These motors usually need a restoration before a reliably constant RPM can be achieved again.

In summary, I would think this unit could be a decent candidate for a full restoration resulting in a like-new Beogram fit for reliable day-to-day operation.