Beogram 3000 (Linear) – Tonearm gets stuck in Lift/Lower Loop

[didier]

Hi everyone,

My Beogram 3000 (tangential version) suddenly started acting up.

During play pressing lift or “< >” makes the tonearm lift and immediately drop again, stuck in a repeated up/down loop. Trying to stop the unit causes the arm to move across while still doing the lift–lower loop, which scrapes the stylus (This was quite a jump-scare the first time it happened, now I’m testing with a dead cartridge.)

Also: Pressing play successfully plays a record, at the end, the stylus is brought back to the starting position (as it should) but then moves back to the record playing position. The turntable then stop turning but seems to still be in play mode.

I attach videos of the issue…

What I’ve checked so far:

• The photo sensor in the carriage is working: during play mode I can advance the arm by tilting it left.
• All gears look intact (adding a photo in case someone spots something off).
• Nothing obviously cracked, seized, or misaligned at first glance, but I don’t know this type of Beogram having just restored an 8000.

I am ordering grease and belts, just to be sure, from dksoundparts, any idea what to test next?

Has anyone seen this lift–lower loop or failed return cycle before on this model?

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by didier.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[didier]

Tonight I realized datalink between my Beomaster 2000 and the Beogram was not working, and testing this further I found removing the 2 pins from the phono socket fixes the issue!

Digging through old threads, I found two previous reports of this exact same problem, both unresolved and both “fixed” only by removing the Datalink pins:

https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/t/45418.aspx

https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/t/20430.aspx

If anyone has ideas about what inside the BM2000 actually causes the fault, I’d love to hear your theories. I plan to open the Beomaster eventually and see if I can trace the source of the bad Datalink signal.

Happy to report back once I learn more!

[Mark-sf]

The Beogram 3000 was designed to fully work via datalink withe the BM3000. While input switching will generally work with older models, other functions can be iffy. There may be nothing wrong with your unit. If your fine w/o using datalink its fine to run w/o those pins. Just don’t lose them! I usually tape them to the TT.

[didier]

Interesting, I didn’t know Datalink was supposed to work with the matching beosystem! When I bought the Beogram I had some doubts, since I’d owned the Beomaster on its own for a while. But when I plugged them together and everything seemed to behave, I just assumed the link was fine.

Everywhere I looked said the only real difference between the BM2000 and BM3000 was the addition of the remote control module.

Good point about the pins! I set them on my desk and my cat immediately started eyeing them, so I’d better keep those safely out of reach…

[Author]

Posts