Hello and my new project to recommission my 1988 3300 system

[987nick]

Hi there

Just thought I’d say hello, introduce my myself and thank you all in advance for the help I’m going to need to get my 1988 B&O 3300 system up and running.

I started buying B&O kit in 1988 with a full 3300 system including the Beogram, Beocord and CD.  I also bought the wall mounting kit and a couple of MCL boxes etc. to network the system around my house.

In 1989 I bought an MX5000 with rotating stand and the VX5000.  The TV system lasted about 15 years when the video player stopped playing tapes and the TV made horrible sparking noises.  Both were sent to recycling.

The 3300 lasted me until 2006 when I very stupidly managed to knock the tip off the MMC4 stylus whilst putting an LP onto the Beogram.  No problem I thought, I’ll just buy another cartridge as they can’t be that expensive; oh how wrong I was.

As the cartridges were about £250, I decided to upgrade the whole system with a Cyrus CD player, integrated amp and power amp.  So, a couple of hundred £ soon turned into a couple of thousand £.  Man maths at its best!!

My 3300 tape player, CD player and record deck were then “retired” to the attic for nearly 20 years.  The Beomaster soldiered on until 2019 as I used it with the MCL boxes to put music into upstairs rooms in my house.  During that time it need the smoothing capacitors and some regulator transistors replaced in 2007 but when they started to fail again, loud buzzing returned, in 2019 it was “retired” as well.

I’ve now decided to get it back out of retirement and set it up in a spare room.  Of course, being nearly 40 years old now things have started to dry up and seize up.

The Beogram amazingly needs no real repairs, apart from a new MMC4 that is (strong feeling of déjà vu).  It started up first time with the turntable running very smooth and quiet.  I have bought some new belts and a new aluminium trim panel and will soon bite the bullet and buy a new cartridge as I intend to use this with my main Cyrus system.

The Beocord 3300 and CD 3300 are a different story which I’ll post about separately.

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