The 12" arm is relatively rare though at least three of us have one - four including you! These have all started life as Beograms with the 9" arm though. Therefore they are not that rare. As far as I know, there was only one type of 12" arm and it takes the SP1/2 cartridge which uses a different tracking angle to the later SP6/7 etc. This does limit its use somewhat though one can now get a decent stylus from Axel. The Beogram 3000 seems to have been a mainland Europe product and it would seem to be relatively numerous. However the 12" version is definitely unusual - the 12" arm was able to be bought separately as were the other versions of this arm - ST/L and ST/A - and were fiited to other makes of decks.

If you want to sell it, I dare say you will get a jolly good price!  

I can confirm "the jolly good price." I just paid a nice price for such an arm, actually an unused one, which I will have mounted on a Beogram 3000 Thorens.

The P stands for Professional, and the proposal was that these would be used by sound and music professionals, who wanted an optimal tracking angle, with a minimum of distortion from tracking error. The disadvantage of the longer arm is that it requires the wider armboard, for which reason they were less popular with people who wanted to be able to place their sound systems with ease. For most practical purposes 9" tonearms do the job excellently, but the 12" tonearm looks quite spectacular on the BG3000 Thorens.

Some very nice photos at the bottom of this link:

Hello Doctor & soundproof,

Thanks for your time and information

I'm pretty sure, my 12 inch ST/P is as supplied from B&O i.e. not a rebuild product. Both the overall appearance of the arm, and the armboard suggests that. 

I meant to upload some pictures of the arm, but I haven't been able to find out, how it is done, and I don't find it discribed anywhere. I'll keep trying.

In the meantime, and if I promise not to tell your wifes , could you make an indication of how jolly good price we are talking about??

Regards

Merc

Go to options and use the Add/Update function to upload images. There's a 500kb size restriction.

I don't think there's any reason to suspect your arm is not B&O, is your armboard a wide rectangle or with a "shoulder" as in the boards on the link above?

The armboard is of a rectangle shape.

Bang & Olufssen have never produced a Beogram 3000 with a 12" tonearm. This is my opinion. I see 2 reasons for this ’statement:

The Beogram 3000 is delivered with a lid and I have never seen any lids for a 12” tonearm produced by B&O. B&O always supply turntables with a lid.

The finish of this armboard is not Bang & Olufsen and is is not the quality (painting and ‘the kind of wood’ used for quality armboard’s produced later by Schopper AG.

I think the famous 12” Bang & Olufsen tonearm is mounted on a ‘homemade’ armboard. 🙂

But this do not change the rareness of the tonearm of course

/Frede

Congratulations with a nice ST/P! If you'd posted a little earlier I would have been in the market for it, but I found one elsewhere. Send Frede a PM and he'll be able to tell you what it's worth, as well as help you find a buyer who will put it to good use, if you're interested in selling.

The armboard itself looks quite homemade. It would have been interesting to know more about the turntable this comes from, whether it was from a Beogram 3000 Thorens, or just a tonearm/board assembled for a "standard" Thorens 124.

Thank you all, for your time and effort educating me. Great with all these informations.  And as some of you have mentioned, about anything that could go wrong in the manufacture of that armboard,  -  really did go wrong!! But as Frede has pointed out, the armboard isn't the main issue.

Now it is up to me to choose between the following 2 options: I can keep the ST/P and go out and find myself af Beogram 3000/Thorens 124 to build a complete machine,  -  or I may pass on the ST/P and let somebody else do the finding .

I think I'll post a PM to Frede, and see what he can come up with.

Thank you all

Regards/Merc

A picture of a B&O 12" plint for Thorens TD 124 (Beogram 3000)
I had the plint in my collection until ½ year ago (I sold to an another Danish collector)
I believe it was an original B&O - it looks very original to me.
The lift came from Ortofon

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And another picture from 1961 showing the mixerpult (made by BOFA (B&O)) from the Danish "Pirat" radio Mercur. It's a little unsharp but I think you can see 2 x TD 124 with 12" arm

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Regards
Per H