Beogram 4002 (5503): A New Arrival From Ontario - First Impressions (Exciting!!: The Main PCB Has a Burn Hole!)

A while ago I received a Beogram 4002 (Type 5503 with AC Platter Motor) from a customer in Ontario for restoration. This post discusses my initial assessment. I extracted the well-packaged Beogram from the Beolover shipping container and put it on my bench:

The hood is quite scratched up:

But it does not seem to have cracks in the hinge area and only minor damage on the inside. This means it could be polished back to a decent look. The better solution would be replacing it with a new reproduction hood from the dksoundparts store in Denmark. Their hoods are faithful reproductions and look crystal clear. Polished hoods always retain some degree of cloudiness.

This shows the deck after I removed the hood: 

It has nice aluminum surfaces and the platter is also in nice condition. It does have the usual use-smudges on the keypad:

Sadly, the coating on the keypads gets damaged when they are used. The acids and fats in the skin degrade the surface. Luckily, we are now able to restore such keypads by installing a brand new Beolover keypad. these keypads are faithful reproductions of the original ones, but are made with a modern coating that should be more resilient. See here for more details about this service.

The wood plinth is in pretty nice conditon with sharp front corners. Right

and left:

I removed the panels and the platter for having a look 'below deck':

The unit has seen some repair efforts already. The motor phase capacitor had been replaced at some point:

I will replace the entire capacitor setup as well as the power supply with the Beolover Efficient 22.8V Power Supply and Main Capacitors for Beogram 4002 (Types 550x). This upgrade will eliminate the chaotic wiring and also reduce the power consumption significantly, which will make the deck run less hot.

Other notable issues are the completely degraded plinth guidance washers:

A typical issue for this vintage Beogram. Luckily these washers can be replaced with a Beolover Plinth Guide Washer Set for Beogram 4000, 4002, and 4004. These reproductions of the original washers are made from long lasting nylon for smooth sliding.

More spectacularly, this Beogram has a burn hole in the main PCB:

This points towards a major failure at some point in the life of this Beogram. It will be interesting to see which part burned out.

This unit also has been already updated by added capacitors to the solder side of the board. These capacitors alleviate a potential issue with this design where a 45 RPM switchover sometimes occurs right after pressing ON:

After having seen the burn hole on the PCB I pressed ON with limited expectations. Surprisingly, the carriage started moving and the platter motor came on. The carriage also found the LP setdown point. All good signs! I guess this means the burn hole damage was patched after it happened...;-). 

In summary, I think this unit can probably be restored to like new appearance and performance.

Stay tuned for the next post describing my restoration process.