Hello fellow members. I am new in this forum and I would like to get some help from fellow members. I have a Bang & Olufsen Beogram 8002 turntable. This weekend I stopped by at the sound in San Jose California to pick a used MMC 2 cartridge which hard to find. After hooking it up with my TT and their equipment, the left channel seems not working.  He switched the RCA and one channel still not working.  He told me it could be the 5 pins DIN RCA cable is bad and wanted me to leave it to their technician for further testing. I think it could be his cartridge MMC 2 is bad. What do you think? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I think it much more likely to be the lead or other fault before the cartridge but that can't be ruled out either. If you have not got a meter to check yourself I would rather personally take the deck to someone who is a little more neutral...

A common fault in MMCcartridges, particularly the later ones. The pins work loose. You can sometimes remedy this by tapping the pins with a very small hammer and resolving never to take the cartridge out again. I would suggest walking away from this one though. Soundsmith are not as pretty but will work and have a guarantee.

You learn something new every day :)

Doctor:

A common fault in MMCcartridges, particularly the later ones. The pins work loose. You can sometimes remedy this by tapping the pins with a very small hammer and resolving never to take the cartridge out again. I would suggest walking away from this one though. Soundsmith are not as pretty but will work and have a guarantee.

Agree with the above, I've had several MMC cartridges with one channel out. Walk away!

joeyboygolf:

Doctor:

A common fault in MMCcartridges, particularly the later ones. The pins work loose. You can sometimes remedy this by tapping the pins with a very small hammer and resolving never to take the cartridge out again. I would suggest walking away from this one though. Soundsmith are not as pretty but will work and have a guarantee.

Agree with the above, I've had several MMC cartridges with one channel out. Walk away!

Me too with a duff MMC3 that had a channel out.

You can actually test that it is the cartridge quite easily. First try it as B&O intended. One channel will not work. Then take it out and turn it upside down and put it in. You will need to turn the gram on and once it drops, catch it and touch the stylus with your finger, The opposite channel will now not work and you will have tested the leads.

Thanks for the input. I did walk away from this guy and tried other route.  Someone locally would like to sell me his MMC 20CL but I am not sure if this works in my 8002. What do you think?

geoff136:

Thanks for the input. I did walk away from this guy and tried other route.  Someone locally would like to sell me his MMC 20CL but I am not sure if this works in my 8002. What do you think?

Geoff,

The MMC 20CL won't fit the arm on the BG 8002.  It was designed for the arm on the earlier BG8000 and its predecessors, the 400x series.  The arm on the BG 8002 is a very different design and only the later MMC series cartridges will fit -  the MMC1 through to MMC5.

Cleve