50 Year Old BANG & OLUFSEN Beocord 1600 Very Expensive REEL to REEL Player - Can I FIX IT??? 

Spoiler Saver Riddle - Can you name 3 consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday or Sunday?????

My dad used to work for Jacob Jensen (the designer for Bang & Olufsen) as a carpenter. My dad was once given an old Beocord by Jacob as he had no more use for it. (maybe he did a few small jobs for Jacob as payment. I'm not sure) It turns out the unit he was given was one of the first prototypes for this model which was in some way modified by the B&O company with an extra tape head. It stayed in my childhood home until recently. All early audio recordings of us 3 chrildren from 67, 72 and 79 were made with that.

What a beautiful machine! Looking forward to part 2, you've invested plenty in to this one so far! 👍

At 29:45 this is a brake. The arm with the felt pad is designed to swing out when the platter is going one way and in when it goes the other way. It is a way to make sure that the reel that winds the tape off is always braking more than the one that winds it on. The two "fingers" - the ones you didn't believe was "factory" is there to set the maximum and minimum braking force by stopping the arm from swinging further out or in. The record/play head has definitely been replaced - but unfortunately with the wrong type. It might work but the original head had much more metal on the front. The black type that you have is from the earlier B&O tape recorders from the 1960s. The problem with the heads that B&O used was that they had a tendency to go open circuit after some years.

I was yelling at the screen "There's a spring missing from the takeup drive idler and there's the missing circlip from actuator lever" . Also that plastic washer that fell out is a shim from the takeup hub. The felt washer forms the takeup clutch which governs the takeup tension. Unfortunately all the rubber drives will have gone hard and un uniform so wow and flutter is likely to be dreadfull. My father had a Beocord 2000 from the mid 60's which was the Rolls Royce of domestic Hi Fi gear at the time and was quite similar to yours only larger and heavier. Beautifully made.

For that little plastic piece, use some baking soda on the glue instead of the soldering iron approach. It will be a super solid, structural hold. Really upped my repair game when I started doing that. You always impress me with your mechanical abilities.

Your B&O videos are some of my favourite they are so well built, I'm looking forward to this!

A brave man, I have fixed a couple of similar age reel to reel machines. It takes patience, time, research and multiple skills to be able to get these old beasts working well again. Bravo!

I used to sell these recorders in the early 70s at Heals. Fiendishly expensive but such great sounding kit. Had one of these 1600s playing Pink Floyd’s “Money” constantly. Personally I had my eyes focused on the new B&O cassette decks, which I couldn’t afford either

Gotta love the way the old B&Os were put together. Beautifully built and with maintenance/repair in mind.

These B&O videos are always some of your best. Lovely equipment and given the age, they always seem to come to with some interesting fixes.

Very nice machine. Back in the 80’s I found a Beocord 2000 DeLuxe (the slightly older larger version of this machine) that was left out for trash. I brought it home and fixed it up, used it for quite a while. Most of the audio problems with mine were caused by the record function switches (oxidized contacts) and the plug-in circuit board connectors. It was a wonderful machine and I used it not only as a tape deck but as a stereo center since it had a built in phono preamp for magnetic cartridge as well as aux inputs. They were extremely expensive and very rare here in the US.

Buddy your on form this week with video I am impressed keep them coming 😊

Love these sorts of videos! Can't wait for part II!

This is very likely related something between the read head and the amplifier, just as you have guessed and not a filtering issue. I would check the connectivity between the head and the amplifier first especially the ground wire.

This kind of old time machines is the content I love

Yes, lovely machine well worth saving, it’s a stunner. I was shouting ‘spring’ when you were checking out that right reel mechanism after I spotted that little hole for it. 😂 looking forward to part 2.

Aside from the awesome content Vince i love watching your vids for one very simple reason! You always manage to come up with ingenious solutions to problems! When you suggested cutting a screw down and popping a notch in it to create a grub screw I literally said out loud "oh my god, why didn't I think of that!" This just solved a huge problem I've been having for ages 🤦😂 Thanks Vince, keep up the good work 😊👍

It wouldn’t surprise me if the original buyer did a switcheroo and bought a fully working one from the seller, but sent back their own broken one - thus getting a working one for free.

Those B&O machines were/are notirously tricky to repair. Being at the high end of the domestic market they naturally more complicated than other domestic decks. Mechanically they're also more complicated than professional decks which are usually designed with maintainance in mind and use a separate motor for the capstan and each hub, hence simplifying the drive system.

You are so going to survive just about anything with the way you figured this out! I am not mechanically inclined so much appreciation. I have an old Tech reel to reel and a box of tapes I've been hauling around for almost 30 years. I could never do what you do but I had to take a look. I bet you find out what is wrong. You seem to have a great understanding of what you are looking at. Warm wishes from Los Angeles!

Brilliant video Vince as usual…. Very relaxing and calming after a hard day… keep them coming. Perhaps a flat disc type shield that slides but holds down the rod that operates the fast forward play stop and reverse, that way it it hides the mechanism and acts as a stop for the rod…. Like a gear shift which hides is mechanism. Almost like an automatic gear shift gaiter in operation hiding the workings but looking uniform in flatness colour ( Matt black ) seamless operation.

Oh, wow, I used a lot of different reel-to-reel units when I made experimental loop music in the 80s, so this really got my attention! VERY nice one there!

£150 in 1969 seems an awful lot more than £2500 in todays money. Great job by the way

Nice one, At least the service manual is available , looking forward to part 2 , The caps would be easy to find 👍👍👍👍

This was a good one! Can't wait for part 2. 👍

Yet another great vid Vince, looking forward to part 2. Hopefully you can get the caps replaced and get rid of that hum.

You need a C-Clip on that middle part of the pivot or a locking star washer 26:02 Left of you head that spring clip i think thats what should have been around that pivot.

I still have one of these as well as an earlier BeoCord 2000 Deluxe K from 1969, when I was just seven years old. The build quality is fantastic and all that I have ever had to do was replace belts and replace capacitors, along with cleaning of capstans and pinch rollers and cleaning the rubbers on the idler drive wheels. The Beocord 2000 Deluxe has the rosewood cabinet and cost £160 back in 1969 (equating to over £2,800 in 2022). They are both something of an anomaly, as they were designed to complete with professional tape decks on sound quality, but not being so easy to repair and strip down for maintenance. All B&O equipment of that era, into the late 1970s had a circuit diagram contained within the cabinet, even the Beolit radios: nice touch, though some numpties did not return them to the envelope after use.

great to see you used the idea of chopping the head off the screw to make it into a grub screw, and yes, it does make it look a lot better with that idea Vince. great video fix. not sure if you want to get the same type of capacitors apart from authenticity, as capacitors do leak, so might end up being a modern day replacement rather than old.

Great work !! I have a Beocord 2000 deluxe which works 90% with just a couple of things to fix.I bought it as it has echo and monitoring capabilities and you can bounce tracks !! Mine also has 4 heads so it can play both 2 and 4 track recordings. I really love what you worked out to repair the lever and working out the belt configs on these machines can be a real PITA sometimes. I do hope you get the sound working because the Beocord machines sound soooo good. :) Looking 4ward to part II .

Wonderful job and the video too. Seems to me very often sellers are lying, it can't be by chance they the phrasing keeps repeating: just a small fix needed by a handy craftsman... Turns out nothing is working and pieces are falling out of the box. I didn't believe that sellers description for a second. It's nice of you to always trying to give them benefit of the doubt! Anyhow, great value for us to watch the repair then :-). Cheers

Great job on the stuff you did Vince =D It's a shame its not 100% working atm! As soon as I heard the hum I said to myself mains hum, caps! That work with the dremel was fantastic =D And the springs too!

Love your B&O repairs.

Cheers Vince! Good to see the Dremel get some use. Happy Holidays!

Thoroughly enjoyed that, hopefully there is a (even partially) successful conclusion.

What a treat cant wait for part 2!!! 😀😀😀😃😄😃😄

I was waiting for you to see the missing spring! Great find!

Epic already, looking forward to part 2

Can't wait for the revisit!

My life is complete an hour episode😍

Beocord 1600, Beocord 2000 and Beocord 2400 were very solid tape recorders, used in teaching in many Danish schools in the late 60s and in the 70s, my school also had them.

Hi Vince. I worked on B&O gear in the back of a "HiFi" shop in the late 60s/early 70s. I didn't see any reel to reel but just about everything else. We had a rash of power supply problems and that hum sounds familiar. They used a linear regulator to smooth and control the output from the "normal" rectified and smoothed supply. No switched mode or chips in those days. Anyway a power transistor would fail short circuit and allow rough 36 volts or so through to the amplifiers which were expecting a silky smooth 24 volts. Horrendous noise. You really need the diagram that was in the brown envelope.

Hi Vince, greetings from Australia! I just stumbled across this video and I like it very much (I watched many of your videos already). I repair electronics, mostly circuit boards on a component level. Sometimes whole devices and then often I have to modify them to accept some different repair solutions for use of available things. My "trade secret" for cleaning and conditioning of all rubber parts, as well as silicon and plastics (e.g. front face and external body of the device - even metal) is using "Tyre Shine" (at least its called so in Australia). The same stuff that car dealers put on the tires for the "wet" look. It rejuvenates plastic so beautifully that sometimes clients ask me if I used a brand new enclosure... :-} You just have to wipe it off with a clean cloth at the end, as it leaves some very minor "oily" residue. Just a tip... Regards, Jerry.

Those "U" chaped rings are there to hold (the one you've found on the table is from the middle pin of the 3 pins you've placed the plastic zippers, and the other at 37:48). You have to force them open so it releases the pressure and let you take them out. When you place them on the spot they are designed to go, you have to open them to insert, then release. I don't know the actual name of them, but they are very common on eletric drill and machines like that. :) (sorry for the bad english!) Keep up with the excelent entertainment of videos that you produce. Have a nice christmas

I love the sound of you inhaling, it's calming like yoga

You don't need a spring Vince, you need a summer.....! 🤣

You have the option of lifting the audio signal directly from the tape heads. You will need a preamplifier with IEC equalization curves, but a standard RIAA phono preamplifier will get you pretty close.

We had until the late eighties a very early Beovision, great big black and white thing it was with a glass case instead of a traditional wood cabinet and it became superfluous being outed by more colour tellies but when it was new, we were considered "posh" as it was super large, had a remote, buttonless front and decent sound able to be hooked up to a stereo (also B&O) and was valveless being fully "solid state" which was space age back then as valves still reigned king for most electrical goods.

I'm just finishing off a Beocord 2000 deluxe. Needed a replacement transformer, the tension arms needed servicing and I now just need to sort out a problem with the autostop. Lovely machines with a great sound and some really cool features! :)

Hi Vinc, I love yours clips. I think that you should make a bulb discharger for circuits. You take a 230V bulb, wire, and spare multimeter probes. When you would like to discharge the circuit, you use this bulb discharger. Ofcourse always be careful with high amp and voltage circuits. I wish You Mary X-mas and Happy New Year. Sory for my english it is my second language.

Where’s part 2 I would have loved to see it working especially after the hard work you put into it

I know it looks a lot of work. But what a quality item. You’ve really got me hooked on these vidoes. Dumpster diving now for old stuff. Set the garage up to do this instead of bothering re qualifying for Electrician lol.

You need good quality low ESR capacitors. Also, that spring that you put in might get stretched over time and it might be too weak or too strong, so I would recommend getting a dedicated spring that matches the original. That's one thing that sucks about these old players... dried up rollers that are most of the time almost impossible to replace these days (unless you can find a fan forum for it somewhere with spare parts sources). Also, I hope you reoiled all the moving parts. 50-year old dried up oil will hinder smooth playback and put more load on the motor. In a perfect world this thing should be taken all apart, but that's for motivated someone who is planning on using this player in his lineup.

These machines are fascinating

Really looking forward to part 2

Well done fixing that without changing many bands.

I love how your brain works.. always asking "how's that work?" or "what if"" '

looking forward to part 2!!

That was an absolutely brutal repair

Vince, you need a small 3D printer. Little plastic pieces, nylon gears, etc. are all easily replaced with a bit of time in CAD and the 20 minutes it takes to print. An open-source kit like the Voron 0 will definitely also tickle your mechanical fancy.

Hi Vince, those little nylon washers are the takeup reel grease washers. They fell off when you took off the takeup reel. Great video. Kind regards. Paul

Hi vice, I love your videos, been watching them all tonight! You’ll probably find issues not with your power supply re the hum as the hum changes in volume when adjusting main outputs! Check the ground wire for the tape head!

I think I found my new favorite channel 😜👍

If you're tackling this without any knowledge of electronics, let alone experience with recording equipment, then good luck! . I've repaired and renovated quite a few open-reel recorders over the decades. I once owned one of these Beocords - 2400 half-track and it was a superb machine (and very cheap when I acquired it....). I used it as a 'master recorder' for a while, it recorded live instruments as well as vinyl or cd albums beautifully and had 'sound-on-sound' cross mixing and excellent recording controls. I still have a recording of Joni Mitchell and Pat Metheny recorded from LP in glorious half-track stereo, that was itself recorded in the mid 80's. . These Beocords are old school circuitry, using copper-etched boards with discrete components, transistors, caps, 1/2 & 1/4 watt resistors etc... The heads were superb, if kept degaused. Most B&O equipment of this era were shipped with a full circuit diagram folded-up in an envelope and stuck to the rear panel of the equipment, which made fault-finding a breeze, as was the modular layout. Ferrograph did likewise. I've had them as well. Now I've got a Sony 1/4 track awaiting service and 'upgrade'. I've also still got my Beogram 1500 deck and Beomaster 2000 receiver. I'd wished I'd kept the Beocord 2400 though.

The reason (sometimes) that the record level meters get buried into the red, is the playback/record switch. You haven't mentioned record function but did describe it as a player ! So why the sliders and the meters ? I could be 100% wrong but great video anyway !

I visited Denmark and the Danes are really proud of the B&O equipment, but the technician I was visiting preferred Paradigm speakers which I also prefer.

Hi. Just to comment that sometime ago I watched a video showing how using wintergreen oil plus like four parts of IPA was adding a lot of flexibility to some old rigid rubbers after a couple of days I believe to remember. Maybe you could look into that.

The real nightmare about RtRs with only one motor to drive everything are not especialy belts but these rubber rollers, their complicated kinematics and old spring tension. I remember I had to deal with a bunch on them when I was repairing my Sony TC630 and it took me some time to figure out what was wrong. The 2nd nightmare is to know where to oil (levers, gears, bearings) and where absolutely NOT to oil. 🙂 And beware about cleaning these rollers with alcohol, isopropyl or not, it can dry them more. When you don't have the "special product" for this some window cleaner, Windex or equivalent, can do the trick. And now I'm impatient to see the rest of the story (and I subscribe+bell! 🙂 )

good job mate.

Nice Video Vince I See That Jeff Lynne Of Elo in His Home Studio Used a Beocord 2000 Deluxe Reel To Reel Machine

“This is going to be quite a long video.” *checks time* Excellent.

never down trod yourself vince, i served my apprentiship at a B&O dealer, those v1600s take time no matter how good you are, *and that was way back when i had full schematics on micro fieche and maxi bins full of spares right beside me lol) labour costs were huge but even now are worth it only through initial investment cost, as an apprentice in the 80s you only worked on 70s stuff and older as they need atleast 10yrs under their belt before they need any work ( i did B&O amoungst others too obv as a panaservice dealer etc too in the days before all these dedicated B&O shops they have the last decade or so now), i started in the 80s and stayed through to the late 90s, i like to call those years the vox to lab transition times, i still remember seeing my first pair of lab pentas around 86 and thinking f&(k me now we have arrived at a stunning era :) it was actually more stunning at that time than say the lab 90s were a few years back tbh as the lab 90s were a 35 year slow evolution, whereas the beolab pentas were just an overnight thing and changed the whole game over all the vox range and it just went on and on :D

I was thinking zip ties also glad you thought about it also!

Love the video

Sorry, but at 31:50 I was laughing my head off when you were wondering why it was making a horrible noise. The flywheel was scraping against the main chassis because you removed the bearing from underneath the capstan when you took the take-up belt off. LOL That hum sounds like a problem with the pre-amp, maybe just a re-cap on that too.

@2:25 ‘I am hopeful’ @2:26 I check the duration of this video to see that it is 59minutes 🤣

Did you try the headphones? could be a simple bad earth or amp issue, noticed the needles dropped when you went over to amp selection, can you try banging an aux through it to rule out the amp? I spend my days fixing x-ray equipment and some of it is really old so this video had my interest, keep up the great videos!

I have a similar one. The B2000 portable version with an integral Amplifier & speakers. Not used in decades.

There is a chance the original buyer had a the same machine, but broken, bought a working one and shipped the faulty one back.. possibly moving over the insides to hide the crime....

great video, i like a lot, keep it up. its 3am i should be asleep.

ive heard that buzz before, capacitor failure, i replaced all the capacitors i could find for mine and it started working again properly. the ones you will have the biggest issue with will be any multi caps/canisters, they dont make the majority of them anymore so you have to replace them with compatible substitutes which dont fit the clamps at all, also be cautious of any wax/paper caps some of those were manufactured in very odd values which are no longer available. the sole remaining wax cap in mine is because its value is impossible to find and i had no idea which direction to deviate for a substitute or by how much

I find lighter fluid (naphta) works much better to get the rubber tires and wheel surfaces cleaned. IPA actually leaches the placticizers out of the rubber, rendering it even harder. Pinch rollers respond very well to cleaning with lighter fluid. Cheers Vince, and Merry Christmas!

hi Vince nice mechanical repair the hum could be filter caps and other caps on the pre and output side of the output amp

No failure, just the beginning of the journey

great video

We had an B&O big hifi system vhen i lived in Denmark and what a quality it is yet

Just subscribed, nice video.

What a coincidence, late last year, I got one of these. Now fixing it up. Plays fine, but snags when rewinding. I'll need to find a way to get the right turntable out so I can lubricate the shaft. Regarding your notes at the beginning, yes, there used to be feet at the back (it's designed to work standing) and the screw on the main control lever cap is not original (that would be a hex-inside-thread type job

Check the record/playback linkages to the switch are working correctly, give the switch a good squirt of cleaner and work it a few times. The terminals in the switch become tarnished over time and create a high resistance.

nice job on the crub screew, lock tight it in place.

hi vince that is what is known in the trade as a high hours machen .I am not sure the fault is the smoothing caps ,i would have a look at the record playback switch (when you press the record button it should move a long switch)

Ah yes another Vince video funny enough i was just watching one of your old videos where you fixed a broken Nintendo 2DS XL with a faulty camera and dead screen.

I se there are many helpful comments but I wanted to add that there are different kinds of tape for different tape heads. You hve to make sure your using the correct tape for the player. Mono, stereo etc. there are also tracks on the tape which are different for various proprietary players.

I'm hardly the expert on this, but here are somethings that you could check out. Replace the main rectification capacitors, clean the switched and contacts with contact cleaner. Dissemble the intermediatory rubber wheels, removing all the old grease and replacing that with a hard working modern equivalent. Buy a spring kit and fit the missing spring with a close replacement. Ensure that the plastic washers are replaced under the tape up reel. Don't replace or move the tape head. It will be almost impossible to realign. Disassemble the entire main motor, cleaning out old grease and using a decent oil on the bearings and moving parts. Replace the rubber belts (i'm sure you would have a local place that can do that for you. I'm not sure if the motor has a run cap. Leave the set on in play for a while and carefully touch the cap's body to see if there is any increase in temp. If there is, you might need to replace that as well.

Vince ,I'm only just watching this video today , never seen. Ye think,of the slide switches you saw !!! Possibly had same design , on let's say ,gear stick. A strong thin plastic protector. Then a large metal washer. With diameter of gear stick Yet with a dense foam material ,as a protector. ?? Possible ,some sort of spring also.

I would suggest that the power supply has a problem. Initially, I would look at the rectifier circuit if it is a block or 4 diodes but either way the smoothing capacitors will almost certainly need to be replaced as well as the rectifier.

I have had tape decks with a dirty play/record switch peg the meters. A little contact cleaner and operate the switch a few dozen times restored functionality.

Yeah, I'd say its time to replace those 50 year old caps, but I'd also be looking at those slide switches in the back, making sure you have full travel and a good blast of deoxit. Don't disturb those heads though as a proper head alignment requires a test tape and an oscilloscope, or maybe B&O have a procedure that's easier but you have to find it first.

See David Tipton's Record Deck overhauls, he has made a wooden (adjustable) frame cradle to hold the shape of the item being worked on, which can be rotated and locked in place to work as your 3rd and 4th hands. Uncle Doug did a vid of similar for amp chassis Small amount of sewing machine oil / white grease for the working surfaces and bearings.