BIC Beam Box Maintenance

Picked up this baby on eBay. In the seventies home stereo was all about knobs, meters and blinking lights. As one author put it: "To really hear it in stereo you need to see it!"

4 directional choices, tunable across the entire FM band and a broad/narrow control.

 

The FM8 is a low end 300 ohm-only model. Others have a coax connector. A proper transformer and shorter lead are in the plans.

 

This one arrived with a rattle inside, before putting it to use I removed the bottom cover to find the rattling part and see just what is inside a Beam Box. Good thing, since this one was showing it's age by its glue failing to keep the parts together.

 

3 of the 4 corner block were loose as were both blocks that supported the internal workings and one nut that held the workings was missing. This caused the variable capacitor to sit on top of the bare antenna elements.

Could see evidence of one repair attempt by simply adding a bead of glue to the blocks.

I removed them and scraped most of the old glue off.

Found a nut for the supporting plastic bar and reassembled it.

Now the variable capacitor floats over the antenna elements as it should. I did some experimenting with an ATS909 found the best selection for KPIG, for a CC Witness to record the daily "Out To Lunch" program. A neat bit of hifi history and no more wires dangling in the window.