Beocord 8004 consistent hum in one channel

[iiv]

Hey everyone! If you follow the vintage B&O forums you might remember my last post regarding my Beomaster 6000. I’ve paused my troubleshooting for that one, and now I’m working on my old Beocord 8004, the matching cassette deck.

When the tape head is engaged (whether there is a cassette present or not), the left channel is saturated by a loud, deep hum – when trying to play some music, only the hum can be heard. This happens both when using the phone out and the amp out.

Does any one of you knowledgable people have a clue of what might be wrong? I suspect, from some googling, that a transistor might be faulty. How would I go about to troubleshoot that?

[Glitch]

I recently repaired a BC8000 with similar symptoms, a loud hum on one channel that pegged the VU meter. After debugging efforts, that were shamefully intensive in hindsight, I found a fairly simple cause for the problem…

Broken pins on the tape head connector to the tape transport. Pins 1 & 4 had broken off in the connector.

Here is a picture of a broken pin next to its replacement.

Based on my experience, I would check the connections to the tape heads for cold/cracked solder joints, broken connector pins, and broken wires before moving on to other things.

Hopefully your issue is as simple to fix.

Glitch

[iiv]

Thank you Glitch! I’ll be away a few days, but that’ll be the first thing I take a look at when I’m home again.

[Author]

Posts