Bang&Olufsen has always been a design-first choice. While it is true that their minimalist devices do sound quite good, they made their fortune with appealing aesthetics and an advanced set of features rather than perfect specs.

The mechanism on that thing looks like a Crosley.

My experience with the B&O products back in the '70s was that the customer was buying "the look." Their imaginations filled in any audible shortcomings. Our boss lived by the motto "The Customer Was Always Right" - and then he showed us the markup. 🤣

My dad, rest his soul, always told me that B&O electronics were poorly designed.

A Bang and Olufsen that went bang!

Thanks for the video. I just picked one of these up to troubleshoot for a friend. In exchange I got a tech SL 1200 mk 2 that I also will have to fix.

Just love your "Bang & Olvasun" take on this unit, indeed looks quite crappy on the inside. The re-used power outlet transformer is actually an upgrade :)

Pretending to be a "high quality brand" but is more crappy on the inside than some cheap brands. like the apple of HiFi.

I have a Beogram 1602 that I bought new for about the same price as a Yamaha turntable. They do look flimsy and cheap but they are well engineered and mine still works perfectly and has a Soundsmith cartridge. Hard to beat perfection.

I have one. They are great turntables, but still not worth the hype, IMO. Even back in the day, they were tough to get replacement styli or cartridges for. That's how I got mine. It was in use in a Seattle club, they wore out the stylus, and were done with it.

The guts kinda look like Crosley.

Believe it or not, I have a pair of B&O speakers attached to our Big-Screen HD-TV. We actually have a "media room" in the house that is set up with our Kloss Model One Novabeam with the 110 inch screen. All our really expensive audio equipment is attached to it. Everything works great, (have Pioneer DVD/LD hooked up with there too). We needed a big TV (I have poor vision so I can't enjoy it unless it is huge) that was HD, so bought a big Toshiba for the living room...where we watch everything now. The B & O speakers were like a grand each I think. The Novabeam still works great and it had new color guns before we moved, but isn't HD. A celebrity friend of mine went nuts when was visiting us. I believe he ordered one when he went back home to California LOL. I love anything Henry Kloss makes. He personally signed off on the Novabeam when I got it in the early 80s. Had to wait 6-months for it!

Just ran across you video, i pulled my 1600 out after 20+ years. Two things I hope you can help with. First, there's a small weight I think has falling off the tone arm but don't know how to reinstall if possible. Second ,dust cover hardware is missing. most likely lost during a few moves. Don't remember what hardware looks like, and do you know where I can get replacements?

Before even watching. I stopped and checked myself 22 seconds in....I realized I forgot to turn off add blockers...reloaded page and here we go...It's easy to jump on KZfaq and watch your favorite people and forget to turn off adblockers while you do so...

You can argue that B and O stuff looks kinda sleek and cool, but up close it's always disappointingly cheap and flimsy. (At least some of their 70s stuff was made a little better on the surface). Even when I try to get a hold of some old, dead B&O stuff from eBay just for fun, its always twice the price of the equivalent (and often better!) units from other brands. There's a B&O store in my town. It just looks like an overpriced furniture shop rather than the HiFi store it's pretending to be.

B&O is all about design and the WAF, certainly not about quality or reliability. I hate working on them. To service a B&O amp and to put it back together is a nightmare.

When I first got into vinyl my sister's boyfriend gave me a nearly new denon dp30l mk II that his uncle had given him. Original box and everything. Only problem was that it had a B&O cartridge adapter and cartridge. My buddy broke the stylus when I was at work and was absolutely FLABBERGASTED when I looked for a replacement...ended up dropping in an ADC QLM for peanuts comparably. Never looked back, it even sounds better. Sad I diddnt hold onto the adapter. A nickels worth of abs and copper I coulda sold for over a hundred bucks.

Never understood the appeal of B&O - seriously overpriced average quality devices. Actual audiophiles poke fun at these units. Okay, they are pretty on the outside.

What are those little round things called to the right of the blue capacitor on the main board? I think it is a potentiometer. I have one that is broken and need a replacement. The one of mine that is broken is under the stop button. Do you think I could use a generic potentiometer and bypass the button to get mine working?

Everey time i hear Jan Ackerman with Focus i feel i am the hapiest man in the world.

I used to have a complete Beosystem 2000 from 1983 (the receiver you described), which was a super system but I got rid of the turntable for the simple reason that the cartridges for it were too expensive.

The linear-tracking B&O's are a nightmare when they need work.

Il faut reconnaître la qualité acoustique très particulière, des amplis tuners b&o, le son réactif, font toutes la différence du chaîne stéréo classique.

I think I will stick with my well built Technics SL-QX200 circa 1984. It's still going strong with original P33 cart although I put a nice JICO SAS stylus on it.

That type of stylus used a bonded diamond chip on a post, which then came off at some point. Made like a cheap Audio Technica.

I’ve got a B&O 7000, it sounds scratchy, it has built in preamp, I’m wondering if it’s the signal path or the cartridge? It sounds great for a record or two, then it would loose the left channel. Please help. Very much appreciated.

Excuse me I am cranky as we are in covid lockdown for 7 months in Melb Australia ... but who ever said B&O was audiophile cream dreams ??? .. I have never heard that expressed as a 20 yr + subscriber to Hifi news and Stereophile... its in the Bose bucket.. enjoy your channel nevertheless PS there is a place for light platter with the right design

LOL, Im not thinking me as snob, but somehow I like this era of B&O, the minimalism ... you know LOL. Serioulsy, Jacob Jensen did a nice job as industrial designer. The performance figures nothing superb .... but still paying for the design ... kinda Apple for audio. What I like from them is, they managed to introduce some techie things on their systems to help justifying the price LOL. Lets wait you get your hands in a Braun system .. things get disturbing LOL. Good vid Sir as usual.

Yeah, B&O turntables was crap. A salesman tried very hard to get me to buy a B&O stereo system, but i didn't like the look of the one he was trying to sell me, in fact i lifted the turntable and it was as light as a feather, so I told him he was talking through a hole in his ass and walked out. Well, if he was prepared to sell me that as a high end system, he could not be trusted. I went down to a family firm and they were totally different, they told me the pros and cons of everything they had in their shop. I bought what I could afford at the time. Yamaha direct drive turntable, Yamaha amplifier, Warfdale E90 speakers. I wanted better ones, but couldn't afford it. I also wanted either a Yamaha reel to reel or a Dual one with auto reverse (put a bit tape in it on slow and go on holiday for two weeks and it would still be playing when you got back) and a cassette deck, can't remember the make, but I never took to cassettes, oh, one was Pioneer and the other deck was Akai, I also had a tuner a Pioneer replaced with a Moritz? Still have the Yamaha gear in the shed, the others went as no room she said when I got married :-((. I used the Yamaha gear and the speakers until we moved again. Now they are all in the shed. I had a Quadrophonic that had a Garrard deck, very thin wires up to the cartridge, can't remember who made the Amplifier, cost far to much, I still think it was a knock off of something else, but it worked fine with The Who Quadrophonic on it. It was only about 16 watts per channel, but there was not a lot of Quadrophonic records coming out, so my mate made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He used it for years without any trouble, maybe he still has it. It was a low end Hi-Fi though, had to be with a Garrard deck, not that there was much wrong with them for a cheap deck, better than Dual. I had a valve system a while, the base on it was something else, you also didn't need heating on in that room when it was on for a while. I tended not to play anything for a while, then just sit down and play records all day and well into the night. Much to the frustration of my father. He was glad when I got a good set of headphones I really liked and I would use those at night, after all it was their house way back then. Wish I had kept the valve system, I think it was Teac, made in the days when they took pride in the finish and the quality. Not like these day when it made of plastic and sounds like crap. I got this thing second hand, not used a lot, but he said he used it for an hour every week. 30 or 60 watts per channel and more bass that anyone would ever need. You had to make sure your records were spotless before playing! It is not surprising that the guy who bought it went away with a huge smile on his face!

They also drive Land Rovers...

I think this was funny, the way you were saying "crap". Unfortunately I have a couple of these turntables. I agree with you 100%.

Meeeaoow! (Mono). Feck! Moving Waves?!! You are a man of class Sir. Class enough to buy Beng and Oafson (Posh pronunciation).What do you think of Goldring Lenco? Love to know. I got to tell you. If I came across you with your setup fixing 60/70s HiFi (or VHS Tech) on a street corner next to David Blaine I would watch you. In fact everyone would.

I was getting into this stuff , saw this video and wanted to see what you thought about it , the intro made me laugh so much😂😂😂 lol , i wanted these speakers from them but they are thousands of dollars , screw that . They’re stuff looks cool but it’s definitely over hyped

Did you remember the scene in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase fell off the roof hanging X-mas lights grabbed the gutter and shot a ice log through the yuppie neighbors house smashing the B&O stereo. Priceless!

In this case, B&O stands for Broken and Obsolete. I have to wonder if this was even being used given the state of the stylus, or simply left plugged in. You could have kludged it with a new power transformer 20 years ago, and freed up some space.

The keyword here is CRAP... Bang & Olufsen, the brand for nouveau-riches...

Unfortunately, B&O looks like all "show" and no "go"! Were their later record players with the futuristic - looking tangent tracking arm any better/worse? Thanks for all your excellent work 12voltvids!

Absolutely with you on your feelings about B&O - utter garbage, and often other companies el-cheapo stuff repackaged in a fancy box. Their VCR's were quite often Hitachi on the inside, and the cheaper ones as well. I recall working on one hifi thing (BeoCentre maybe?) - - God it was a nightmare of a thing. I was so glad to see that bugger out of the workshop.

What a coincidence, I restored one of these just 2 days ago. Well it was a 1902, but their identical. If it's crap then maby show us one of the great US made turntables like the ehh, the... uhhh... like the...ehh hmm.

Your Right they are crap. When I worked in the trade I dropped my B&O account that provided my company with about half a million pounds a year because it was junk. The only deck I sold in numbers was the linear tracking version and you could buy much better decks for the money. People bought them to match there B&O equipment to sit on their fancy Danish sideboard. The reason I sold so much was The Russian Trade Delegation ( aka KGB) used to buy it in large quantities to ship back to the USSR.

Big Money?....it looks like a crosley underneath ...

Sold this overrated crap for years, only to those thinking that they are higher up, in society, than you are 😝 Overrated, overpriced, and, i think, looking very cheap 😉 Audio/Video equipment for those only wanting an exclusive stylish look, as it is nothing more than showing rather than using 🤔

It was expensive, doesn't mean it was good. HAHAHA

Late 60s - 70s highly regarded style. Very expensive.

HaHa- My younger brother once grabbed a bag from outside a charity shop when he was out with his accountant-mates on the town. it contained a B&O hifi- which he had no use for and gave to me. It mostly worked but I couldnt understand the attraction for the first-time buyer and the cost of it when it was new. You are correct about those stylII- Someone is selling a BN cartridge on ebay at moment for £650...

I went through a B&O stage a few years ago, worked my way up the vintage range & ended up with a Beomaster 8000, lovely looking unit that sounded not bad, the internals were a fucking nightmare, lost all interest in the brand. Wouldn`t describe B&O as audiophile, the sound was fun when you messed around with bass and treble, but all in all I wouldn't dream of ever buying their shit again

I too have no liking for B&O stuff, all show and no go! I spent ages trying to fix a B&O CD player with no sound, turned out to be faulty transistors on the muting circuit. Nasty to work on, nice to look at.....

There's actually no stylus on there. What one sees under the microscope after cleaning is the socket where the stylus was bonded but now is gone.

Ah yes.. Beograms.. I dont know how many times i`ve seen people walking out of thrift stores with these turntables under their arm with that "oh boy i made a good deal" grin on their face.. Only to come home and find out that it needed a new cartridge that costs 25-30x the price they paid for the deck itself.. I`ve actually intervened a couple of times when i`ve seen teenagers trying these deck out and told them that for a new cartridge with a good stylus you will be eating only ramen for the next 6 months.. Personally i got 3 of their tape decks in a closet that i bought for parts trying to get ONE of them to work but no.. Same damn faults with every one of them.. Atleast i got them for next to nothing...

Ok the mechanism looks better than the cheap Chinese mechanisms found in the lowest end Crosley record players (note I did not say turntable), but how much did these low-end B&O turntables cost?

i see some red plastic can Roederstein Capacitors, they are timebombs like the frako caps , and yes B&O is cheap Philips crap sold for goldprices by B&O

I sold these in my audio days such a good turntable i love the looks always have 1 Dave you can fixit

Feel free to send some of that rain south. We could use it. Drought for over a month.

B&O is expensive because of the design, not so much because of the quality🤷The MC-System ist the most expensive part...

B&O its the Bose of europe.

Love the intro comments lol

Ahh. I remember back in school they made a point of going trough how different even the schematics B&O had in the service manuals. And what do you know. They did not use the standard symbols and signal path markings. Too bad I did not grab all the service manuals the repair shop I used to work in had when it closed down. Problems was there was so much of it.

And now to the positive sides: 1. If you wish to listen to Radio Moscow there's no better receiver than the B&O cartridges. Had a Beogram 2400 coming through years ago, and it picked it up better than any radio. 2: If you wanna get drunk, just put a strobedisc on that thing and watch it for a moment. It's way cheaper than beer. 3. If you are into surprises B&O sure is the thing. It's like removing a nice looking candy wrapper, and finding a turd inside. Great video mate, and thank you for those words. The coolest people are those who flat out speaks the truth, and you Sir are as cool as they come. This is a brand that almost make me feel ashamed of being Danish. Stay safe and keep the awesome stuff coming.

iheard somewhere b&o had a seprate design house to draw up thier so so chic sleek new age looks lol! no user serviceable parts!!!lol crazy the came up with thier cartridge mount system b&o crtdg.tiny 3volt motor to drive the platter and pure plastic wow! ok u always do great trouble shooting dianostic work guy now have a cold glass of wine on this headache!!! id be happy with a bsr lol!

Like BOSE, it is all marketing. But they do look COOL! I use to go to Macy's and turn the receiver of/on because it was a touch sensitive button until they kicked me out, LOL. The sound was no better than a cheap receiver, but LOOOOKED so COoooooL,

Bang & Awfulson ... haven't heard that before 😂

B&O is the overprised version of cheap Philips turntable's. Always fun when a audiophile compares a Philips with a B&O and thinks B&O is so much better 😂😂😂

I’m really shocked that the B&O equipment is so poorly made and shockingly cheap junk. I was a teenager in the 70’s and I was into hi fi and had a decent component system, B&O equipment was marketed and sold as a high end product and commanded a high end price in the UK. The B&O equipment was way out of my price range, it looks like I was lucky in avoiding this junk. It’s more of a style over quality, product, they sure ripped a lot of people off.

To me B&O from the 80s seems like the Apple of today. Cool and premium-looking products but overpriced for what they offer, compared to other brands. I think their VCRs were made by Philips and Hitachi.

Don't disagree about B&O, but coming from the person who fellates Bose (the Yankee B&O, and even worse build) this video is funny.

"Is it for sale?"

I don't think B&O was ever loved by audiophiles, they were more for the Bose-type crowd who cared about looks more than sound quality. They still make headphones and they're the same way now, they are style cans.

Far from perfect, these things are always broken... I will keep my Technics thanks very much!

Yes that diamond tip got eroded to null!

lmao "Piece of crap turntable" Good video.

welp i got my first record player a few weeks ago, a sony ps-fl7-ii, had to replace the cartridge since it didnt have one, sounds good playing some steve miller

You ve got one channel dead in your intro i only hear 1 meow

HA!!! So FUNNY!

B&O’s main problem was that they didn’t have an App Store ecosystem... 🤣 This was probably before the iPhone, though, so no one had invented the App Store, much less a turntable that would run apps! 🤣

ok I really struggled over giving you a thumbs up or not. In the end i did because you may have solved a problem i have with a much more expensive bit of b&o kit than this one, which is the lowest of the low budget item of its day. pretty unfair to judge what remains a totally unique and innovative brand by its crap budget line. Which was very very crap.I'm not disputing that...

Nice video very good info I'll give u 40 bucks for it

I hate working on B&O equipment.

And play records on B&O other than Jazz or symphonic classical orchestra is something outrageous,also people that own those machines tend to hear without listen music only on every christmas vacation and new years eve.More or less.

Your vitriolic comments at the start made me chuckle, hatred of assholes and funny too :-D That is a pile of crap!, over expensive crap. The special cartridge is disgusting. " A turntable for snobs." And people with more money than brains. I would take the motor and the transformer out and bin the rest.

good video share

So, going to treat that transformer like that squirrel in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? Smack it with a hammer. And if I had the money to blow on B&O, I'd spend a little more and buy McIntosh. Then again, I also like value for money. The Japanese made some great turntables that are bargains. The money saved would go towards an excellent cartridge.

You didn't piss off any audiophiles. No audiophile would own one.

I fix lots of turntables.... There's certainly something better than this. Last one I did was a Panasonic/MCS... not bad actually.

Is that the wind blowing the trees I here?

They were basically stylish crap.

I would put a pickering v-15 cartridge on it with epoxy putty out of spite & force it to work.

You haven't pissed off any audiophiles. They know most B&O stuff is crap.

You rattled off Thorens, Techincs, Dual, Garrard, and BSR, but not Sony. I think Sony made some great turntables.

B&O . . . all style and no stylus . . . lmao . . . Well, it has class. Too bad it is all 'low'.

WHERE TO BUY A CHEAP DIAMOND HEAD ????? IMPOSSIBLE I KNOW :D 200$ A HEAD, THANKS B&O

Maybe I'll leave my cousins b@o in the box. Like the old saying, let sleeping dogs lie.

I was a fan of yr repairing skills but u couldn't find a replacement transformer? Seriously? & Even if u couldn't, u didn't put a SMPS board & get it running? I'm really surprised. So basically if u dont get suggestion from yr textbook, u r a dud!

I wonder how th buildquality is on their new 9000 dollar turntable

dont understand the change the 1800 that i fixed is solid and a new tip 40 euros new belt 15 euro ...this is plastic fantastic i agree this is ugly

Definitely a very worn stylus right there...

Don’t know when to quit?.

A bangin' Olufsen? 😂

Good

You're correct there , they are crap.

You would think they build that thing better! My LP120 has more guts in it then that and they cost way more then a LP120..