Hi Beaker,

it is as ugly as hell but the combination of the Dual 601 and the Shure V15 MkIII is actually very good.  How much of that is due solely to the cartridge (which is widely recognised as being very good) - or the amp it's playing through I'm not sure.  I actually have a Dual 721 and love that one too.

They can be bought for almost pennies and are available a lot in Germany/France which is where I've bought the 20 or so Dual TT's I have:

Hi,

I have à Dual 601 too (with the rare integrated RIAA preamp).

While I feel that it is a fair deck, I think it is not up to a Beogram 4000, or even a 5005. My 601 has its original cartridge - an Ortofon - with a new stylus, and sounds a little dull, but with great bass, and clears the most difficult tracks with ease.

I've had better experiences with Ortofons though. I remember an el cheapo FF15XE sounding great on a DD Technics, some 30 years ago.

What would it sound like with a Shure? Well, I was always bored with the V15V I had, so much so that I gave it to a friend. I will always give a Shure cartridge a wide berth when I see one!

A matter of taste, perhaps.

You should listen to a Beogram 8000 equipped with a Soundsmith cartridge! So yes, it is quite possible that your B&O cartridges need new tips.

I don't have many Beograms to compare it with but have in the past had most types (60's 3000's excepted) and none have sounded as nice. There is the possibility that it's the cartridges on the Beograms. Do B&o cartridges age worse than those from other manufactures? As said the Shure is from approx 1975 and has its original stylus so is a similar age or older than most MMC*** type cartridges.

The Dual deck itself isn't exactly wonderful looking and does have the usual speed problem in that occasionally it will start at 45rpm even if 33rpm is selected. A quick stop then start sorts that out then the speed is steady.

Most of the time I'm listening through my 80's Bm6000 and Bv Pentas. I suppose the point of this is to try and persuade myself that getting a new or rebuilt cartridge will be worth it and it will sound better than the ugly beat up Dual.

Hi Beaker,

for the outlay - and once you've done it, the cartridge should last a lifetime, I'd get your B&O cartridge rebuilt.  You can then fully experience the B&O deck at its best.  Then you can also make a fair comparison and decide which TT you want to make most use of.

You read the forum as much as most others so you're aware of the suspension issues with aged B&O cartridges.  Not unique to B&O and let's face it, if the suspension doesn't fail, the diamond will give up at some stage on any cartridge and need replacing anyway so is not investment free.  I have about 20 cartridges waiting to go to Axel for work as all have failed over time.  It's a consumable.

It will be worth it.  Whether it sounds better will be up to your ears.  I guess so as the BM6000 and Pentas is a nice combination.  The BG will be the icing on the cake.  If you don't do it, you may regret it later or at the very least, not know what you're missing!

Dave.

I have a bg8500 with mmc3 ( which I love ) and it looks sleek . I also own a technics sl dl1 direct drive.

And to be fair the technics t/t is a far better put together bit of kit compared to the beogram with a warmer sound !but not a sharp as beogram 😁

But I just enjoy them, I could look at the beogram all day.

Let's hope b&o get back to designing turntables again (soon)😁

This could be opening a can of worms but are Beograms a bit "form over function". Personally I think that all the post 4000 series tangentials are very plasticy and not particularly well built. Even my Dual is a lot more substantial than any Beogram from the 80's onwards. Just look at the platter on some of those decks, its just a thin bit of pressed metal.

They 100% are more more beatiful than most decks and far easier to use with a lot of them being remote controllabe but are they actually good sounding decks? Because of the inability of using different cartridges on them its hard to tell. I know that you could use the MMC's with an adaptor on other makes of turntable, has anyone ever heard this? Is it that they are really good cartridges on average decks so they sound pretty good?

Dont get me wrong I wont be getting rid of my Beograms, but from a purely sonic perspective how good actually are they. Even in the 60'swhen B&O wanted a top quality deck for their top of the range system they didnt build one, they just phoned up Thorens!

 

Personally I have used many different decks from various manufacturers, ranging from cheap plastic builds to turntables with huge heavy platters and expensive tonearms, and one thing I have learned is that once you get to a certain point most of the upgrades are just snake oil. As long as you have a quiet bearing, a stable speed and a decent pick-up it will sound good. B&O could have continued to build crazy spec turntables but it think they realised its pointless. My Beogram 5005 with rebuilt mmc2 sounds as good as I've heard. And its easy to set up correctly. No protractors, azimuth setting, overhang etc to worry about. And no tracking error due to it being tangential.

Just my 2p worth.... 

Good observations Lee. On the one hand, as opposed to electronics and CD players and such, turntables and cartridges and arms are all electro-mechanical resonant systems, and are subject to a lot of real differences due to the complex nature of matching arm mass and resonance, cartridge compliance, alignment, etc. On the other, the fact it's about impossible to do a rapid A/B or even single blind proper test means that people can and will imagine a lot more differences than actually exist either. Some of the described changes, particularly the magnitude of them, always seemed suspect to me in reviews.

Back in the day where I worked we had this Micro Seiki turntable, gorgeous thing, huge thick aluminum platter with legs/pods that stuck out on three sides that you could mount up to 3 arms on. That was the closest thing I've seen to being able to do a rapid playback switch and it wasn't perfect. I still suspect that the majority of differences heard were due to the cartridges more than the arms, as long as the arm wasn't totally wrong for the cartridge.

Of course, if you came to about any technical person today who knew nothing about audio and said, we have two ways to go here, we can digitize the music, store it on a durable media, read the digital bitstream and convert it into analog audio, or we can press these little wiggly grooves into a plastic disc, and drag a small needle on the end of a piece of tiny metal attached to magnets and wire and recover the audio that way. Guess which one actually makes sense? 😎 It's just that Edison wasn't very good at digital design...

Ofcourse top of the range Beograms are excellant!! But compare apples to apples. 

Yes, some of the lesser Beograms were cheaply made, hence why the COST CHEAPER.

A properly restored and overhauled Beogram 4000 series (4000,02,04,6000) and the 8002 will hold their own and then some against other machines costing the same if not more. No heavy platter??? That would defeat the idea behind the suspension system.

The people that could afford B&O back then, wouldn't of been happy forking out all that money and then having to be a "slave" to the turntable with setup and changing needles etc. What B&O did, was make the BEST machine that recquired the least human interference. There are compromises when you do this, but what they achieved is amazing. You could place the turntable practically anywhere as the suspension system was that good and even on the same shelf as a speaker didn't harm it that much. You could change out cartridges in a matter of seconds and then just reset the weight gauge. Done, sorted in less then a minute. Not being a slave to the turntable is what its all about. You are the boss. You want to place it in a certain place, no worries. You want to pause it in the middle of a record, no worries, you can't be bothered cleaning the tip after each play? Well that's why there is a self cleaning brush on the 8000/8002 that does it for you. Again, not being a slave to the turntable. Tangential tracking was used to ensure the best quality from no interfearance. Awesome looks were just bonuses. B&O's top models were no fuss record players that held their own against the same price full manual setups. Just what a rich B&O customer of the time would of wanted. Remote control use? Well you arnt a slave, your the boss so ofcourse 😉

If you have a top of the range B&O turntable that is in perfect working order, your using the top needle or recommended needle for it (Soundsmith does brand new needles so no excuse), you are playing it through B&O's recommended amp for it (8002 uses Beomaster 8000 etc), using decent speakers (preferably top range B&O from the era of the Amp) and you reckon that it doesn't sound great.......well.....this site may be visited by children so I can't elaborate.