Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Packing for Shipment

I know the owner of this nice Beogram 4004 is ready for it to come home so I went through the packing steps and have it ready to take to the shipper.

The first steps I do in packing a Beogram is to remove the cartridge and lock down the floating suspension. The Beogram 400x series of turntables have three locking screws that are accessible inside the case if you remove all of the deck panels or from underneath the turntable if you don't want to open it up. In this case I preferred the latter.

Note: Only use a hand screw driver and don't over torque the screws. They just need to gently reach their travel limit and stop.

Now on to protecting the deck and tonearm for travel. The suspension is locked but the top platter and sub-platter could come loose during shipment should the box be turned upside down (a very real scenario).

I remove the top platter and pack it in a nice vinyl record shipment box.

I leave the sub-platter in place and cut a matching platter circle from packing foam. I also cut out packing foam to take care of the deck and tangential arm assembly. After aligning everything I glue my foam circle to the deck protective foam and fit it into place.

As you can see the dust cover closes over the foam packing insert. Now I put the turntable into a plastic bag and seal it up with clear packing wrap.

The Beogram 4004 is now secure where nothing should be able to move during shipment no matter what side the box is set on.

For outside protection I double-wrap the turntable using eggshell crate type shipping foam.

That entire bundle is set into my double thick walled shipping box. Instead of two separate shipping boxes I have been opting for a single box that has two layers of cardboard instead of the usual single layer. I cut and glue white shipping foam to the bottom and sides of the cardboard box.  The Beogram and platter fit nicely inside. Cables and cartridge boxes fit in the little compartments I created with extra foam blocks (also glued to the sides of the box).

The last two pieces are another eggshell foam top piece and a shipping foam lid.

This type of Beogram packing has worked well for me. The resulting size of the box is a little smaller than my old double boxed container so it is easier for the shipping guys to handle. That will reduce the chances of a drop.

It is always sad to see a project unit go but there is already another turntable waiting for restoration. Here's to a safe journey home.

Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Final Test Run

This Beogram 4004 (Type 5526) project has been through a lot. The initial restoration in getting the turntable functioning again was very straight forward and progressed quickly. After that several delays popped up. There were issues with a wobbly sub-platter, restoration of the keypad, polishing the dust cover and repairing the dust cover hinge attachments.

This past week everything finally came together and the Beogram entered its final play testing phase.

I repaired the dust cover hinge mounts using Beolover's reinforcement patches. Here is a sequence of pictures that show the dust cover hing mount repair.

As with most things where old glue needs to be cleaned off I use some GooGone to clean off the Beogram dust cover trim surface before re-attachment.

Like Beolover's repair I used very thin double-sided tape to re-attach the trim.

On both the dust cover and the keypad surface I experimented with new coatings to the surfaces. Spray coating the dust cover is more expensive than the usual polishing method but the resulting dust cover surface is much more durable. It resists scratches and makes cleaning a lot easier. The finish looks good but the clarity of the cover isn't quite as good as the original, non-coated material. So there is a trade off to consider with this option.  I haven't decided which method I prefer so I will need to create some more samples to compare. If the owner of this Beogram 4004 decides he doesn't like the coated finish then no worries, I have a plain polished dust cover I will trade out. Luckily the dust cover on these Beogram 400x turntables is very easy to remove.

Here is the re-assembled Beogram ready for test play.

Since this Beogram will soon be returning to Florida and I am still bummed out about Tom Petty I am playing all the Tom Petty records I can find in my collection.

Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Keypad Contact Cleaning

My Beogram 4004 project is about ready to wrap up. The dust cover has been polished and the keypad surface was refurbished at Beolover's workshop. After reassembling everything I found that some of the keypad buttons were not responding consistently. That usually means the contacts are dirty so I removed the keypad contact board to take a look.

Sure enough there was quite a bit of oxidation.

The contacts look pretty tarnished but it isn't anything a fiberglass brush can't fix followed by some Deoxit contact treatment.

This looks much better.

The Beogram 4004 controls are now working perfectly again.

Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Cleaning and Polishing the Dust Cover

The Beogram 4004 turntable has been test playing in my office listening room for a couple of weeks now. All that is remaining on this project are a couple of cosmetic issues. One is polishing out some minor scratches on the dust cover.

The procedure for this is time consuming because it takes a number of wet sanding steps using finer grit sanding material on each step. After each sanding step I rinse off the excess sanding residue and dry off the dust cover for inspection. Then I rotate the dust cover ninety degrees for the next step so each step is perpendicular to the previous step.

Here is a picture of the Beogram 4004 dust cover prior to beginning the work. It is hard to capture the true severity of the scratches in a photo but you can see there are scratches on the dust cover. I have seen much worse but these are still worth polishing out.

Here is the dust cover and all of the polishing tools laid out on my fabrication table.

This picture shows what to expect after the first wet sanding step. In this case I started out with 600 grit wet sandpaper because there are not any real deep scratches on the dust cover.

After going through 600 grit to 2500 grit sanding steps I reached the 3000 grit sanding step. That is the halfway point in my progression.

Here is the dust cover after the final sanding step of a 12000 grit Micro-Mesh pad.

It is starting to look good again but you can see it is a little hazy by looking at the sanding tool packaging text under the dust cover.

After a buffing polishing step using an eccentric orbiting pad on my power drill the dust cover clarity really comes back.

Here are two pictures of the polished dust cover similar to the two I posted of the dust cover before starting the work. The scratches seen earlier are gone.

This dust cover looks like it is ready to be re-installed on the Beogram.

Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Electrical & Mechanical Work Complete...First Play Test

I will begin this post with a picture of the Beogram 4004's first play test. It feels great to listen to some Stevie Ray Vaughan playing while I compose the blog report.

To get to this point from the last post I had to install the two Beolover replacement LED modules for the speed trimmer indicator lamps and run the 24 hour platter speed stability test.

Here are some pictures of the speed indicator LED replacement.

The LED lamp replacements on this speed trimmer circuit reduce the load on the Beogram motor control enough to show up as a final improvement on the 24 hour speed stability test. This of course goes hand in hand with the Beolover restoration of the DC platter motor, new trimmers on the main board and the new RPM speed selection relay.

Here are two plots of the 24 hours speed tests I performed on this Beogram motor. The first one, back in May, was with the Beogram before any restoration. The second plot, from the last 24 hours, shows the dramatic difference in the platter speed test results after the completed mechanical and electrical restoration work.

Beogram 4004 Type 5526: Finalizing Mechanical Adjustments

As usual with these Beogram 400x turntables it takes a good number of iterations on the mechanical adjustments before I am satisfied that the turntable is correctly aligned and ready to play records again.

The remaining final adjustments on this Beogram 4004 were the platter height adjustment, tracking force calibration, stylus tracking path check, stylus set down limit and the tangential tracking sensitivity.

For the height adjustment of 23mm between the Beogram platter deck and the top of the fixed arm I ran into a problem where the tangential arm assembly wasn't level enough with the floating chassis frame.

I stripped the Beogram chassis down again and moved the set screws for tangential arm assembly height so they could be adjusted from the top instead of underneath the floating chassis. This will save time in the future and not require taking everything apart again if that adjustment needs to be tweaked.

I ran into a second problem which was with one of the set screws on this Beogram. Someone previously had damaged one of the set screws where it could not be removed. I had to use a Dremel tool to drill it out, then re-tapped the hole for a replacement set screw from my spare Beogram 4004 unit.

Once I was passed that issue it was pretty straight forward to adjust the tangential arm assembly, using the set screws, to get the fixed arm level with the chassis.

I re-installed the floating chassis in the Beogram case and adjusted the platter so the top of the platter is 23mm from the top of the fixed arm. Sorry for no pictures but here is a link to some reference pictures from a previous project.

With the deck height set I went about calibrating the tracking force for the cartridge. The way I like to do that is to set the tracking force wheel to 1 gram, then adjust the counter weight and tracking force wheel as necessary so I measure 1 gram with my digital cartridge scale.

Since I haven't put the Beogram deck completely back together I needed a good base for the scale to rest on in order to measure the tracking force. The ridges on the Beogram 4004 platter don't allow room to put the scale under the tonearm so I borrowed a platter from a Beogram 8002 turntable which is completely flat.

I also left the Beogram 8002 platter in place for the stylus tracking path check.

For the stylus lowering limit adjustment though I switched the platter back to the Beogram 4004 platter as the adjustment is to make sure the stylus lowering limit clears the first ridge of the platter.

That is to protect the stylus if the Beogram ever fails to detect that a record is not present.

Everything is looking good so far. The final adjustment I make is the tangential tracking sensitivity. With the platter belt disconnected from the platter motor I can manually rotate the platter. The adjustment is to set the tonearm down on a record track, then adjust the tracking detector so the tangential arm drive motor begins rotating after a couple of (manual) platter rotations. After that the tangential arm motor should move the arm a little bit on every rotation. Obviously the exact results of this check can vary some depending on the record you use for the test. The Beogram service manual calls for a specific B&O test record (3621001) and track (5) that I have never been able to find. So I typically use a couple of old records I have and test the tracking sensitivity on several tracks.

Once the tracking is set I test play the old record and watch the tangential tracking system do its work.

Next step is to connect this Beogram to my listening room amplifier for the first record play test.