Beogram 4004: Repair of Transport Damage

A Beogram 4004 that I had restored in December of 2023 came back to my bench with some significant mechanical damage. After I removed the aluminum panels I found a strongly bent carriage spindle bearing bracket:

Some fairly brutal force must have whacked the deck on its left side to cause the carriage weight to bend the bearing bracket. This basically created so much friction that the carriage was not able to move again. An examination of the enclosure yielded that there is also some damage on the plinth. It seems it was hit by some object on the left side close to the corner where an indentation can be seen:

More scrutiny yielded that the off-switch had a dislocated return spring, which immediately explained why the deck would not shut down anymore:

I did my best to bend the bearing bracket back into shape and I restored the switch:

This essentially allowed the carriage to move again unobstructed and the deck shut properly down again. At this point the deck would still not track properly, however. I realized that the arms were also out of alignment. I restored their orthogonality and parallelism, and then adjusted the tracking feedback. This made the deck work again properly.

I will now play a few records on this deck to make sure I did not miss anything, and then it should be time to send it back to its owner in the UK.

Beogram 4000 Packaging for Shipping: An Update on How to Secure the Carriage

This post is about a change to my packaging instructions for Beogram 4000, 4002, and 4004. I now recommend securing the carriage by using an M3 screw to bolt the carriage directly to the floating chassis (instead of taping the arms cover to the aluminum platters as shown in our videos). 

The reason for this change is that the Beogram 4000 I recently restored came well packaged, but the arms cover suffered unnecessary damage to its labeling:

Sadly, the 'no-residue' Blue Tape that was placed over it to hold the carriage in place during shipping damaged the labeling when I removed the tape. While I point out in my shipping instructions to place some cut to size paper under the blue tape for protecting any labeling from 'lift off', it keeps happening. And it seems that the arms cover has the most vulnerable lettering of all, potentially due to its different aluminum surface finish. It is not brushed like the other aluminum surfaces, and much smoother. 

I recently learned that all Beograms came out of the box with a screw installed that firmly locked the carriage to the floating chassis during transport. Sort of an additional transport lock for the carriage. Unfortunately, the original screws seem to have mostly gone missing. I have never seen one. They probably get lost since they need to be removed completely during the setup of the turntable.

For this reason I came up with a modern replacement, which I will supply from now on with my Beogram shipping containers:

My carriage lock screw fits into the M3 threads that are located under the small hole in front of the solenoid (the bolt threads point to the hole in the picture below):

BTW: This looks identical in many 4002s (the 4004 does not seem to have this feature), just check out the gap between solenoid and PCB.

The carriage lock screw should be bolted down until some resistance is felt, but not too hard. Just enough that it will not come loose during transport. The solenoid wires may need to be pushed aside a little bit when bolting the screw into place.

This shows it installed:

The head clears the aluminum panel by about 2 mm when the bolt is screwed down all the way:

After this is done, it is not necessary anymore to tape the arms down like I showed in my packaging video (please, note that the strip/foam at the end of the arms are still necessary):

If you do not have a suitable M3 screw at hand, you still need to do the tape, but please make sure you put a strip of paper under the blue tape where the lettering is!

Beogram 4004 (5526): Replacement of the Transport Lock Bushings

I continued working on the Beogram 4004 from Pennsylvania with the 1985 platter motor implant. While struggling to get the motor to run properly, I replaced the transport locks while I had the PCB out. This Beogram had the orange type bushings installed in the transport locks, and they are usually brittle and often come apart during shipping. Telltale signs are orange-brown splinters distributed around the enclosure, like here next to the transport lock on the right side of the enclosure:

In DC motor Beograms the replacement process is fairly painless, since the floating chassis can easily be removed as there are no soldered wires connected to it. All that is needed is to take the main PCB out, unplug the remaining plugs, and remove the transport lock assemblies. This shows the above assembly without the top plate of the lock:

After removing the other two locks, the chassis came out:

At that point I vacuumed the enclosure, since the splinters of the lock bushings have a tendency to block the floating chassis from floating since they like to accumulate in the space between the chassis and the enclosure.

Then I removed the bushings from the chassis:

and inserted the new 3D printed bushings:

They are printed as two-part assemblies that they can be inserted easily (like all featured Beolover parts, these bushings are available. Just send an email or use the contact form on the right if you need some). I installed them into all three locks: First one half is inserted from the bottom

and then the other from the top:

Then it was time to put the chassis back in:

and bolt the locks back together:

This Beogram can be shipped again!

Beogram 4004 (5526): Installation of New Transport Lock Bushings

The Beogram 4004 (5526) that I am restoring right now had the orange type of transport lock bushings, which are prone to degradation. This was evident immediately after taking the Beogram out of the box, since there were telltale orange plastic fragments all over the place:

This shows the left transport lock without its bushing:

I removed the floating sub-chassis of the Beogram, which revealed the degraded remnants of all three transport lock bushings:

I vacuumed the enclosure, and then it was time to install the new 3D printed bushings:

Each bushing has two parts, one to be inserted from each side of the lock orifice. Like all parts featured on this blog they are available to other B&O enthusiasts. Order them directly via the Beolover Shapeways store. Six parts are needed for all three locks. This shows the lower part of the left lock:

And with the sub-chassis outfitted with a new bushing installed:

I also did this for the other two locks and then I replaced the top halves of the locks:

Now this Beogram can be shipped again without fear for damage due to loose transport locks.

Beogram 4000: From German Ebay to Tampa via Hong Kong Poorly Packaged

I recently received another Beogram 4000, which was purchased by a customer from Hong Kong on German ebay. Unfortunately, it was not packaged very well and sustained a fair bit of shipping damage. The damage is particularly sad since the unit appears to have been in excellent condition pre-shipment, which is pretty rare these days in the Beogram 4000 department. If you ever wonder how to package a 4000 properly, check out our packaging video on our 4000 page. Anyway, here are a few first impressions:

The platter was not secured and it created a bit of havoc under the plexiglass hood while bouncing around in transit. The hood has some severe scratches on the inside, which may not be entirely polishable since they go out to the edges. It also banged into the arms, which are now at an off angle:

 There are some black streaks on the aluminum panels, which I hope can be removed with Mr. Magic Eraser Pads. The platter itself split into its two components:

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

Of course the spindle pulley came off when the platter banged into the arms:

On the positive end, the precious red position indicator survived the ordeal:

There is a bit of 'human intervention' visible:

A very unprofessionally installed supply capacitor. Whoever did it essentially cut the contact tab of the expired capacitor off and then soldered a new non-fitting radial cap to it. Savages!

I switched the unit to 110V and turned it on. The strobe light is working...some good news!

The AC platter motor is barely running. This may have to do with a bad motor phase shift capacitor or is simply a poor adjustment of the AC oscillator amplifier. 

A bit of good news here is that the plinth of the deck is in very nice shape. The front corners are pristine, which is pretty rare:

The bottom line here is that all this mess could have been prevented if the German knucklehead would have listened to our advice. He must have assumed that packages are always carried upright by white gloves wearing people who really care (so called WGWPWRCs)...in summary, this Beogram can probably be restored to something close to its original glory, maybe a few parts need to be procured from a donor unit to make it really shine.

Beogram 4002 (5513): Replacement of Degraded Transport Lock Bushings and Missing Cabinet Guiding Washers

The Beogram 4002 that I am restoring right now came with the degradation-prone orange transport lock bushings. Furthermore, most of the cabinet guiding washers were lost. A number of Beograms came with plastic washers, which have a tendency to crack and leave the building. This shows one of the locations where the washer was missing:

I installed five new 3D printed washers

This is how they look installed:

It is best to get one printed in black to replace the front-center one. If it is white, it can be seen through the crack between the aluminum panel and the plinth. These replacement washers can be obtained via the Beolover Shapeways Store.

To get to the transport lock bushings one needs to disassemble the locks:

Then the degraded locks can be taken out in pieces. It is a good idea to remove the floating sub-chassis to be able to vacuum out all of the pieces of the degraded locks:

They can impede the floating motion of the sub-chassis if they get lodged beneath it. This photo shows the old bushings and the 3D printed replacements:

Each replacement bushing comes in two parts. One is inserted from the bottom and the other from the top:

These parts are also available via the Beolover Shapeways Store. Once the bushings are installed the chassis can be reinstalled. This shows one of the bushings in place in a reassembled lock:

Almost done with this Beogram...on to replacing the corroded DIN5 plug.

Beogram 4002 (5523): Replacement of Degraded Transport Lock Bushings with 3D Printed Replacement Parts

After restoring the arm lowering mechanism of the Beogram 4002 (5523) that is currently on my bench, I took out the circuit boards for restoration. With the circuit boards out, it was a great moment to replace the degraded transport lock bushings with 3D printed replicas. The reason being that fragments of the degraded bushings usually distribute themselves throughout the Beogram enclosure, and some inevitably will go underneath the floating chassis. This poses a problem since the fragments can be large enough to impede the free motion of the chassis, thereby preventing it from insulating the turntable and the tonearm from the enclosure.

The best way to get all the fragments out of the enclosure space is to completely remove the floating chassis, which requires the boards to be out. This shows the chassis still in place:

and the empty enclosure after removal:

Removal requires the disassembly of the transport locks (small parts distributed next to the enclosure - make sure you label the upper and lower nuts as they are counter threaded and note that the longer part of the lock bolts needs to point down). If you look closely you can actually see three bushing fragments that were hidden under the carriage:

After vacuuming out the enclosure space, it was time to install the replacement lock bushings. Here is a picture of a complete set of the bushings. Each is assembled from two parts:

They are available via the Beolover Shapeways store. To replace all three bushings you'd need to order six parts.

This shows one of the orifices in the sub-chassis where they install:

One of the bushing parts goes in from the bottom:

and the other from the top completing the assembly:

After installing the other two bushings, I re-installed sub-chassis. This shows one of the locks half-way assembled:

and completed:

On to restoring the PCBs!