Beogram 4004: A New Arrival from Virginia - First Impressions

I recently received a Beogram 4004 (Type 5526) from a customer in Virginia. The deck arrived well packed and double boxed. So everything went well on the road! I unpacked the unit and put it on my bench:

The lid looks like an ice rink after a hockey game!...;-):

It could probably be polished, the hinge areas seem un-cracked. But I would recommend a new replacement hood from the dksoundparts store in Denmark instead. They are exact reproductions of the original lids but with improved hinge sections for more longevity. I removed the hood:

The deck is in a pretty rough condition and the surfaces all need a good cleaning. The keypad is worn through:

The coating had completely deteriorated. The only way to fix this is to use the Beolover Keypad Restoration Service for Beogram 4002 and 4004. We can restore such keypads to like-new appearance (if the screen printed labels are still intact).  This Beogram also has a damaged platter with a ring shaped wear mark around the center pin:

The platter also has some scratches and shows signs of cleaning attempts that damaged the surface finish. Sadly, we do not yet have a service for the restoration of platters. There is right now only one way for fixing this: Find a new platter.

On the positive, this Beogram has a nice condition original plinth with sharp corners right

and left:

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

This Beogram is a textbook example for deteriorated transport lock bushings as the many orangish fragments strewn around the enclosure suggest:

This can be fixed by installing a new Beolover Transport Lock Bushing Set for Beogram 4000, 4002, and 4004. The unit also has the usual cracked carriage pulley:

The plastic is not strong enough to withstand 50 years of stress exerted by the set screw bolted into it. Luckily there are nice Beolover Aluminum Carriage Pulleys for Beogram 4002 and 4004 available.

Then I plugged the unit in and pressed START. Nothing! No reaction! Then it occurred to me that the carriage position PCB was not plugged in:

This board also carries power to the carriage motor. No surprise that nothing moved! I plugged the board back into its main PCB jack and tried again. This time the carriage started moving, but it did not find the LP setdown point. The carriage sweeped the platter and then came back home. Most likely there is an issue with the position detector. This can easily be fixed by installing a Beolover Carriage Position PCB for Beogram 4002 and 4004 (Types 551x/552x). This board is a plug-in replacement (except that the motor leads need to be soldered to their two pads). It carries a modern monolithic interrupter read out via an opamp and a Schmitt trigger. This takes the guesswork out of the setup. No more aligning of the LED relative to the sensor or adjusting the LED intensity etc...The board also has a built-in diagnostic feature that allows visualizing detection events via a switchable LED.

Other observations during this test were that the platter motor was running, that the 33 RPM panel bulb is burned out, and the 45 bulb only burns very weakly (maybe a non-spec bulb was installed at some point). This can easily be fixed by installing a set of Beolover RPM Panel LED Backlights for Beogram 4002 and 4004 (Types 551x/552x).

In summary, this Beogram 4004 can be restored to like-new performance, while like-new looks would require finding a decent platter.