I was lucky enough to get a Beogram 4000 turntable today! It needs a little work, but it came with a perfect MMC20EN cartridge – I’m listening to Miles Davis on it right now and it sounds incredible!

The outside and dust cover are in great shape, and the platter looks really good too. Here are my initial thoughts:

The control panel is nice (ignore the Sharpie marks under the position indicator for now…):

The platter is beautiful:

Now for the not-so-great news: the sensor arm insert is missing, and the cartridge mount came off with the cartridge. It wasn’t removed for shipping, so it probably got knocked off in transit. I didn’t even realize it had a cartridge attached… Regardless, this has made me even more determined to perfect my cartridge mount replacement part.

It’s fascinating to see how B&O designed these early mounts. They used a flexible circuit board, much like my design, and the plastic part was simply molded to create a bulge at the end of the mount, pressing the PCB onto the cartridge contacts. Later designs use metal contacts and a rubber substructure for flexibility. This gives me hope that I can make a successful replacement mount. As for the missing sensor arm insert, I might have to sacrifice one from a 551x. The 4000 takes priority!

Here are a few more observations: they did a really professional job on the RCA plugs:

And the power cord is seriously heavy-duty. What were they expecting, that it would power a lawnmower?

Overall, I’m thrilled with this find! I can’t wait to get this beauty up and running again.