Guys,

I got a complete 5500 system at a flea market this weekend. It mostly works (tape drawer is sluggish and doesn’t close and CD drawer does notnopen). My biggest concern is the the stylus on the Beogram doesn’t seem to drop down on the record appropriately. When it drops, it seems to have too light pressure and doesn’t track well and sounds muffler and distorted. If I tap the top of the tone arm it “drops” down a few millimeters and plays fine. I took the MMC3 cartridge off and the stylus appears to flex freely and has some spring action to it. I adjusted the tone arm weight to the max and it still has this problem. I made sure to unlock the transport. I even put something under the record to lift it off the platter to no avail. I assume there is either a problem with the cartridge or one of the mechanisms in the tone arm. What should I do? I will get the service manual today at some point but is anyone familiar with this issue? I paid $200 for the whole system including the MCP (which has battery acid damage and does not connect and a Beolink 1000 remote that works fine ) I figure that even if nothing worked perfectly, I could recoup my money by getting the cartridge for my Beogram 4000 that I plan to fix one day.