Hi all. 

First of all, be patient with my English, I write better in Italian.

Second, I want you to know that I love my Bang & Olufsen Beosystem 4500 although I have had several troubles with it.

Second, I want you to know that I love my Bang & Olufsen Beosystem 4500 although I have had several troubles with it.

I consider it as a Ferrari: very expensive, very exclusive, beautiful to see, styling oriented but unreliable and of poor intrinsic quality (relatively to its price, of course). I consider the Customer Care policy of B&O very poor too, again considering their customer target.

I don’t want to bore you with the problems I have had, you can read about them (if you want) at the end of this e-mail, but now I need someone's help.

My system is installed on a wall, as was shown on the brochures of the nineties.

A year ago I experienced the last failure to my Beogram CD 4500: the black glass touchscreen / display came off from its black plastic frame and fell on the floor: broken in 1000+ pieces.

With horror I saw that it was hold in place only by a black bi-adhesive tape (this is one of the countless reasons why I talk about poor intrinsic quality).

By touching the named rubber pins the CD player is working properly in all its functions but, as you can imagine, the device is awful to see and reading the functions of the touches directly on the printed circuit is not easy...

I first contacted B&O Denmark serching for the spare part, but they refused to help me directly inviting me to contact my dealer.

They also told me that the spare part probably was no more available.

I complained that the 4500 was a very expensive system, that I expected more than some circumstance words from a firm like B&O and that, in the past, they helped me directly sending mea copy of the Beogram 4500 Service Manual when I experienced recurring failures. No more answer...

I contacted the dealer and the Service Station but they where unable to help me. No way to have a spare.

Now my fundamental question is:

What have I to do with my ugly Beogram CD 4500?

Throw it away is the only solution?

Many thanks for any suggestion on how to find a spare part or re-build the it.

Thanks to everyone coul suggest something. 

Thanks if there is no solution too. I consider this forum my last resource...  

Ciao (hi all) from Italy.

Paolo

My B&O 4500 System serial numbers and purchase dates

Beomaster 4500 s/n 08446381, nov. 26, 1990

Beogram CD 4500 s/n 08517316, nov. 26, 1990

Beovox 5000 s/n 08497536, nov. 26, 1990

Beogram 4500 s/n 08666527, sept. 7, 1991

Beocord 4500 s/n 08518248, sept. 7, 1991

 

 

In service problems.

On Jan. 12, 1993, two months after the expiration of its warranty, the Beomaster 4500 had a problem of an overheating shut down due to a broken NTC. The problem was solved for the first time by an authorised repair station charging 172.000 Italian lire of that time (about 100 € of today). I experienced exactly the same problem three times more since then but, since the Company was so kind to send me the Service Manual of the Beomaster 4500, I was able to solve it simply by replacing the NTC indicated as R34 on diagram C (Power supply & output amplifier, page 2-4 of the named manual), just spending something like 0.5€ and half an hour of work (the first time I spent about 2 hours for the troubleshooting). The fourth reparation was done by taking the risk of modifying the NTC type.

Fouy years ago the cantilever of the phono cartridge of the Beogram 4500 broke in two parts. No spare part available from B&O so I had to buy a Soundsmith cartridge in the USA....

Six months ago the touchscreen of the Beomaster 4500 detached too, but I was lucky and prepared to the event: it felt on a carpet and I was able to put it in place with by glueing it on the plastic frame.

Now I do not understand why a prestogious brand like B&O has so poor customer care policy... nor is able to suppy spare parts for a number of years appropriate to the class of they products (I would accept such a policy from e.g. Philips or Daewoo, whose products are mass oriented and whose prices are by far lower than that of B&O).

 

 

 

Hi & welcome to Beoworld

The problem you describe with the glass is very common with your system due to aging of the double sided taped used to fix the panels in the factory. My advice would be to remove all of them from your system components and glue them with 2 part epoxy resin glue or black silicone cement. This is one of the problems with hanging these systems on the wall vertically - the glass will eventually fall off and break as you have discovered. You probably won't find a replacement glass panel these days from your dealer so you may have to look for a second hand non-working one (or CD3500) on ebay or similar.

In fairness to B&O they would have kept parts available for these for 10 years after end of manufacture, which is far longer than most other electronic equipment manufacturers, but they have to stop at some point.

Chris.

There are definitely no more glass panels left from B&O. When I bought a replacement for my Beomaster, my dealer said it was the last including the Beogram. Don't get rid of it yet especially since you love it so much. Keep searching for a CD4500/3500 that is not working or just buy another 2nd hand CD4500 and keep yours for spares. I have always felt that due to the poor way the glass was attached to this system, B&O should be a bit more sympathetic, especially as its to be mounted on the wall. Only an idiot would use double sided tape. A major flaw!

Thanks for your reply!

I did not know that the problem of the glass was so common and agree that B&O shoud be more friendly about it. By the way, have you any idea on how many 3500 and 4500 systems (I understand the the two systems share the same glass) have been sold worldwide?

Thank you anyway...

Ciao

Paolo 

Sales figures are something that B&O are strangely coy about. There will have been plenty sold though and they appear quite regularly on auction sites.

 

Chris.

Hello and welcome to Beoworld, Paolo.

I can empathize with your situation.  The standard reply from B&O seems to be "contact your dealer".  While in some sense, this is a logical recommendation -- to contact someone who, hopefully, is nearby the customer and might even have an established relationship [or use the opprotunity to create one] with the customer -- this recommendation also can give the impression of B&O being uncaring and shuffling off the customer.  Here, in my circumstances, contacting the dealer means contacting one of the showrooms where the sales clerks in the shop would inform me to contact the Service Department.  So, the customer is passed off once again.  The whole B&O "experience" then revolves around the efficiency and customer service levels of the Service Dept., which in my case, does not appear to be well trained in client-care relations.

Agree with You, Wings.

When I purchased my 4500 system in the nineties, there was "B&O Italy" with a Customer Care office whose people helped me with satisfaction. Now it is disappeared and, as you suggest, "contact your dealer" means to me contacting a salesman in a showroom. Furthermore "contact the Service Department" means contacting a shop that is authorised to repair B&O devices and several other brands: usually they see a B&O every 5 years and are not familiar with it. So I can't understand why the B&O keeps a Customer Care Organisation in Denmark only to tell the people "contact your nearest dealer". Last time I wrote them I complained about this policy due, in my opinion, to the fact that B&O suffered a big crisis in the mid nineties and the company was sold to a big multi-national whic does not see any economical advantage in supporting the "old" customers.

Thanks for your comment.

Paolo

B&O are not owned by another company. There was a short time when Philips took a minority share holding but this has been bought back. I have to confess that I have always found the customer care department at Struer very helpful though clearly they do have limitations as they don't have access to the spare parts anymore.

Thanks Peter too.

Agree with you 98%. The remaining 2% is explained by the photo attached (see note). As you can see in the picture, my 4500 is connected to a Revox B77 MK2 dated 1984. I am able to find any original spare part (from the Revox Authorised Service) for this beatiful piece of mechanics without any problem. The price class of the Revox is comparable of that of the B&O 4500. This is what I mean when I say that I expected more from the guys from Struer...

Have a nice day.

Paolo

P.S. To be honest, I have tried but I'm not sure to succeed in attaching the named photo of my B&O to this e-mail... If not, please be so patient to explain me how to do it...