[AdamS]

Martin’s words are spot on but be VERY careful which switch cleaner you use!

I have used Servisol (Now Kontakt Chemie) Super 10 for 30 years and my father used it for 30 years before me. In all that time, the only thing it has ever damaged for either of us was….A Beovision 3502 switch unit.

Ours started having intermittent contacts and so my father gave it the treatment and it was fine for a week or so. Then, one day, he clicked out the volume/tone control drawer and it wouldn’t go back in. Long story short, it needed a complete new switch unit and the dealer showed us the old one which looked like it had had acid poured over it – the whole back of it had completely melted.

So, for the first and, I hope,only time in my life I will say to you – for god’s sake don’t use Servisol switch cleaner on it!

[AdamS]

Yes, I do know Tim very well and I will happily pass on your comments!

[AdamS]

Congratulations everyone and a very Merry Christmas to all!

[AdamS]

Which particular aspect of it are you referring to? Tim doesn’t really update the site with new B&O products as they aren’t of much interest to him – the site is intended as a reference for the classic models.

I do keep nagging him to put more stuff in the ‘Workshop Notebook’ section, though!

[AdamS]

Yes, it will work fine.

[AdamS]

Latest B&O toy here, found in a local ‘junk’ shop by a work colleague. Needed a very, very deep clean and some attention to the battery compartment which had suffered from some badly leaking batteries.

After that, a basic service and it works a treat!

[AdamS]

Everything’s going up, sadly. Have you seen the price of Beolab 90s recently?!”

[AdamS]

In my experience, the best phono stage for a Beogram 8002 is the one built into a Beomaster 8000!

[AdamS]

If you’re near London then you aren’t far from Tim Jarman, who is in Farnborough, Hampshire and he would give the deck a thorough once-over for you.

You can contact him through his website here: https://beocentral.com/contact

[AdamS]

I’ve owned two Beogram CD5500s and both of them had so much slack in the clamping mechanism that both regularly were able to clamp the disc off-centre and thus be unable to read it.

I’ve talked to Tim Jarman about it and even he just shrugged and confirmed that they pretty much all do it to a certain extent.

Lovely sounding player but it feels like a poor piece of design to me.

[AdamS]

I’ve always used Speakerrepairshop and their products are excellent.

I would not recommend replacing the midrange foam surrounds with rubber. This will change the parameters of the drive units. Stick to foam.

[AdamS]

Well, both Pentas are reassembled.

One seems to work but produces barely any sound, the other makes a ‘pop’ when you plug it in and goes straight into protection mode. The displays don’t work on either of them.

Looks like they’ll be converted to ‘Beovox’ Pentas for the time being to see if they work like this, as I haven’t got time to look into the amps further at the moment, and I’m supposed to be using them at the Hi-Fi WigWam show the weekend after next!

[AdamS]

It’s a development of the Beogram 2402 that added Datalink for use with a suitably equipped Beomaster. More details oN beocentral here: https://beocentral.com/beogram6000-1980s

As Tim says, on the site, it’s a bit of an oddity, but still a decent deck, especially with an MMC20CL. I’d be buying it!

[AdamS]

They’re certainly ‘cosy’ inside!

[AdamS]

Finally getting round to sorting out my Beolab Penta 2s. I re-foamed the midranges earlier in the year so have now re-fitted them and am working on the amplifiers.

 

[AdamS]

That’s the spirit!

Whereabouts are you located? Someone on here might be able to recommend a repairer near you.

 

[AdamS]

Great news. Let us know how you get on.

[AdamS]

It’s a truly wonderful amplifier, so whatever you do, DO NOT even consider “consigning it to the tip”!!

It’s a perfectly straightforward, if moderately complex, analogue amplifier design and so any half-decent repair person should be able to fix it, especially given that the service manual is available. I would say that it’s not unreasonable that it’s due for a bit of a service after 50 years.

Well worth doing, in my opinion. You’d have to spend a fortune to significantly better it.

 

[AdamS]

Interestingly, the only Wi-Fi issue we’ve ever had is with our Beosound 1 (first generation).

It was located in the kitchen and the wireless router (a standard EE model that they supplied when we switched to 100MB fibre broadband) is in the lounge at the other end of the house.

When we first set this up, everything was fine but, as time went on, the Beosound 1 struggled more and more with the signal and eventually became un-listenable – continually breaking up and dropping out when streaming Spotify. We ended up putting it into a spare bedroom much closer to the router where it is fine. I then replaced it with the Beoplay M5 that I won in a Beoworld draw in the kitchen, which works perfectly, as does the Beosound Core in the dining room next door to the kitchen (and which is actually even further away from the router).

Has anyone else experienced the Wi-Fi performance of a B&O product worsening with time but with no other changes? The Beosound 1 now gets barely any use now it’s in the bedroom, but we love it and can’t bring ourselves to part with it!

[AdamS]

It’ll be done in exactly the same way as on the Beolab 90s, I imagine – using DSP.

[Author]

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