Beogram 1600 was manufactured primarily for the US and French markets; therefore in the overall scheme of things, there weren’t many of these around. A fairly basic machine, Beogram 1600 was designed for use within the Beomaster 1600 and Beocord 1600 system when it complemented these other products nicely. It fitted with the MMC 20E combined cartridge/stylus.
Beogram 1500 is the acclaimed Beogram 1000 3-speed stereo record player equipped with a built-in stereo output amplifier delivering 2 x 8 watts of audio output. The Beogram 1500 has no built-in loudspeakers but may be se with external speakers e.g. the Beovox 800 or the Beovox 1000.
The Beogram 1500 has jacks for radio and for tape-recorder – the Beocord 1500 de Luxe would be particularly suitable. If you use the Beogram 1500 in connection with an FM tuner e.g. the Beomaster 5000, you have a small but complete hi-fi system.
The Beogram 1500 has separate adjustment knobs for volume (with built-in balance adjustment), bass and treble. Pushbutton panel for control of on/off, tape recorder, radio, and gramophone. All these functions are conventionally placed on the top of the instrument. Built-in voltage selector for switching between 110, 130, 220 and 240 volts AC. The Beogram 1500 is very elegantly designed and has a transparent dust cover
In the real world, this is a Beogram 1000 with a rather nice 8W per channel amplifier attached. There are two types with the later ones using the same amplifier as the very upmarket Beocord 2400 reel to reel deck. Surprisingly good though the isolation of the deck was no better.
The Beogram 1202, although looking very similar to the earlier Beogram 1200, was an entirely new record deck and was far more sophisticated than the earlier model. It continued with the multi-peg system of record support – possibly the decks greatest weakness – and also lacked the hinged lid of the Beogram 3000 to which it was otherwise practically identical. This is the 1200 type deck to own!
The operating system was simplified from the 1200 though the same arm and motor were used. The suspension was however far better – imagine this deck as a Beogram 3000 with a silly platter and a less useful lid and you will not be far wrong. It is however the best of the ‘peg platter’ decks. Very collectible.
Beogram 1200 – Types 5213, 5214, 5216, 5217 – was Bang & Olufsen’s first ‘designer’ system. The design ‘kinship’ which emphasised the interdependence between B&O’s various products, became a characteristic of B&O for many years. Beosystem 1200 was one of the first products selected by the Museum of Modern Art for the museum’s permanent collection (not exhibition) in 1972. The system components were designed by Jacob Jensen.
In 1969 the Danish Society of Industrial Design awarded Bang & Olufsen and Jacob Jensen the ID prize for the Beomaster 1200 radio/amplifier, Beogram 1200 turntable and Beocord 1200 cassette recorder for unusually beautiful and user friendly design. The jury emphasised in particular the Beomaster 1200 receiver which pointed in a new direction for the design of radios.
In 1972 the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) chose seven Bang & Olufsen products designed by Jacob Jensen to be included in their Design Collection as representing excellent examples of the Museum’s criteria for quality and historical importance; design, in fact, which had influenced the twentieth century. Beogram 1200 was one of those seven products.
The 1200 series represented the logical continuation of the line of development and design which put B&O at the forefront of manufacturers of entertainment electronics.
From an audio point of view, this was an advance in some ways – isolation from vibration was slightly better though still not up to the later decks. The peg support for the records was however not so clever as the excellent mat of the 1000 and 1800 offered far better cushioning. It did however look wonderful. Close inspection of the studs reveal that the inner studs are slightly shorter than the outer ones. They do remove for cleaning so do make sure you put them in the right places!!
Beogram 1102 was a fully automatic, hi-fi stereo record player with electronic servo-drive and high specification level. Operation was easy and straightforward. All functions were controlled by pressing the rectangular operating panel and if dissatisfied with the pitch of the record, speed could be adjusted by depressing the panel and rotating the little thumbwheel.
The pickup was an MMC 3000 with a spherical diamond. It tracked records at a stylus pressure of 1,2 grams. In order to fully exploit the pickup’s outstanding qualities, B&O constructed an extremely light magnesium pickup arm which, together with its unique suspension, ensured low inertia and thereby good conditions for correct contact between stylus and both walls of the record groove – at all times. Even warped records could be played satisfactorily.
Despite high specification levels, Beogram 1102 and 1902 automatic record-players are extremely easy to operate. All the technicalities are hidden under the surface.
Bang & Olufsen’s Electronic Servo Drive ensures that the rotatory speed of the Beogram 1102 and 1902 was always correct despite variations in the mains current supply. This is so because the system has a special feedback circuit which effects automatic corrections to compensate for these inherent variations
Beogram 1102 could be made up as part of the Beosystem 1100, together with other compatible Bang & Olufsen products
Beogram 1102 UK price in 1978: £97.00
These decks are beautifully made and offer super sound quality for almost no money. Much easier to maintain than the tangential decks simply because they are very simple! Excellent isolation from external vibrations – strongly recommended – and they were when new by Hi-Fi Choice! Simpler than the earlier 1100 – and better for that! A DC motor replaced the AC motor fitted to the 1100 and was electronically regulated with speed adjustment done through a potentiometer as opposed to the complicated measures used in earlier decks. This method would roll out across the range of Beograms.
The most basic of a new range of beograms, this model was amongst the first to use the new MMC range of cartridges.
In the case it used the bottom of the range MMC3000 and was designed to be partnered by systems such as the Beomaster 1100.
Much more slim and elegant than the 2000 that it replaced, it featured the triple leaf spring suspension that was a feature of all Beograms from that point onwards. As one of the earlier models in this range, the 1100 used a belt and idler wheel drive mechanism. This would be replaced in the later 02 models with a simple belt drive.
These decks are beautifully made and offer super sound quality for almost no money. Much easier to maintain than the tangential decks simply because they are very simple! Excellent isolation from external vibrations – strongly recommended – and they were when new by Hi-Fi Choice!
The turntable and overall design was by Jacob Jensen; the tonearm and MMC cartridge principle was by Erik Rørbæk Madsen. Beogram 1000 was the recommended turntable for Beomaster 1000.
Beogram 1000 was the very first Bang & Olufsen turntable to be designated with the suffix ‘Beogram’. Before its introduction, earlier decks did not, strictly speaking, hold this product name.
This player has extremely low vibration and rumble – a decisive feature for playback of stereo gramophone records, due to the fact that the stylus must be sensitive to vibrations in all directions.
The Beogram 1000 has antimicrophonic suspension that takes up acoustic and mechanical vibrations from the support and prevents the stylus from leaving the groove. In practice, this means that mechanical vibrations from the support or from persons walking or dancing in front of the Beogram 1000 cannot make the stylus jump in the groove. Such vibrations will be absorbed in the antimicrophonic suspension and will not reach the turntable or the pickup.
Equipped with the world-famous B&O ST/L-15 pickup unit; heavy turntable designed as a stroboscope disc; built-in hydraulically damped pickup lift operating y means of a rocker button. Specially engineered speed selector (78, 45 and 33.3 rpm); built-in special centre insert for 45 rpm records. The Beogram 1000 is available in two versions: Beogram 1000V (for 240/110 volts AC) and Beogram 1000VF (for 240/110 volts AC with built-in preamplifier.
Choice of teak or Brazilian rosewood finish and with a practical transparent acrylic dust cover.
And so ends the brochure speak! The Beogram 1000 was heavily based on earlier decks and, despite what B&O said, was not that resistant to external forces. It also was not able to be played with the lid on and indeed the lid had a cut out at the back to allow the pick arm to protrude. It allowed reasonable play back and was reliable but performance led to B&O looking elsewhere for a turntable for the Beolab 5000 system.
Wall Bracket / Shelf for BeoGram
A universal shelf that will support all Bang & Olufsen turntables from the past 30 years. Including three cable entry points to allow you to bring cables from below the shelf or through the wall.
The Beogram 1001 was a slightly updated Beogram 1000. The major change which you may notice is the lack of the name on the front of the cabinet. You may then notice the lack of a 78 rpm setting and finally the cartridge changed to the SP14 rather than the SP6/7. Performance was however just the same – surprisingly good but poor isolation from external vibration. The lid was just as useless as before and did not allow it to be left on during playback.
Bang & Olufsen does not need to engage high profile international design studios to create its designs. Even large, internationally recognised companies like the Danish hi-fi and video manufacturer can work with young and almost unknown Danish designers such as Henrik Sørig Thomsen MDD. As long as the talent is there, there is no limit or boundaries to what can be done. The association between the company and the designer started when Henrik Thomsen, who was then studying at the Danish School of Design went to Bang & Olufsen for a period of practical training. He has continued to work with them ever since.
Sørig Thomsen Design has produced a wide range of telephone products for Bang & Olufsen. BeoTalk 1100 is just one of them – an answering machine of the highest quality, in contrast to many of the cheap models imported from the Far East. It can be placed on a table or desk, or mounted on the wall. Like so many other Bang & Olufsen products, its functions are divided up into primary functions, which are visible all the time, and secondary functions, which are concealed behind a panel, and are only for ‘special occasions’.
Thomsen studied social sciences, built houses and looked after the gardens on the roof of the Danish central bank before becoming a designer at Bang & Olufsen.
“I suppose I’m an unusually typical example of the generation that was young at the start of the 1980s” he says. “We didn’t really know what it was we wanted to do so we ended up dabbling in all sorts of things. As I see it, that mix of the practical and the intellectual made us more rounded people.”
Thomsen himself swapped a place at Aalborg University for a carpenter’s workbench. After a few years building furniture and houses, he hung up his hammer and did a brief stint as a gardener on the roof of the Danish central bank before coming back down to earth to spend the money he’d earned on a cycling trip from Lisbon to Denmark. In 1990 he headed instead for the Danish School of Design in Copenhagen and it was while he was studying there that he convinced Telecom to take him on for work experience.
“We went to Bang & Olufsen on a study visit” says the 37 year-old from Northern Jutland. “We had a look round Telecom too and that’s where I got the idea of asking for a work placement.” A blessing in disguise.
Today Thomsen has his own Design Studio in Århus, Denmark’s second city, but most of his time and energy is devoted to projects for Bang & Olufsen Telecom and Bang & Olufsen Technology.
The fact that there was no computer available for the placement student when he arrived may well have been fortuitous. It meant that Thomsen spent most of his time working with physical models in the model workshop, converting pencil strokes into three-dimensional solutions. He now works in wood, foam and ‘Cibatool’: a professional modelling material.
“I like working with models” he says, “which could be because I have a practical approach to the subject.”
Even during his three-month placement he tried his hand at various projects, his first being the BeoCharger for the BeoCom 9500, created in the Telecom workshop. Apart from the materials, it ended up looking almost exactly like Thomsen’s first sketch. During his placement he also designed various telephone accessories. Completely afresh.
When his five-year course at design college came to an end, Thomsen was contacted by Bang & Olufsen design and concept manager Ole Mølbjerg who was keen to take him on to work on a new project. Mølbjerg has been Thomsen’s mentor for every Bang & Olufsen project he has worked on since. The first was the BeoTalk 1100, which, to begin with, wasn’t even a clearly-defined product.
“It was exciting because with this product there were no preconceptions,” says Thomsen. “There was no archetype which you could put in front of you and say ‘This is what an advanced answering machine should look like’. It left the field wide open to invent a whole new language of design.For me it’s important that the design illustrates what the product can do. It’s about using design as a language, which also makes the product easier to use.”
“It’s an exciting process which is all about daring to be honest with each other – taking constructive criticism on board is the key to obtaining the best results.As I see it, products should have a kind of poetry to them,” continues Thomsen, “but I know full well that it’s not something a designer can just decide. It’s up to the owner to see the product as something poetic – all I can do is hope that it happens.”
Ideally, poetry is expressed by the products being able to speak for themselves, conveying in a simple way what they contain and what they do.
“I think that my generation, which has now grown up into potential purchasers, is making greater demands in terms of the real content of products. They have to be environmentally friendly and speak to our aesthetic sense and our intellect.”
Thomsen thinks it’s important for Bang & Olufsen’s products to retain the universal values inherent in the marriage of functionality and design – a marriage which is both ahead of its time and rooted in history.
“So it’s important to me that the products which are created are made well, and are beautiful and functional.” At the same time, the quality of Bang & Olufsen products is also part of thinking green, because a long product life helps to limit the consumption of resources – a factor which Thomsen believes consumers will continue to demand in the future.
Thomsen has also worked on the BeoCom 6000, BeoCom 9800 and BeoCom 4. Besides telephones, he has also had projects for Technology and designed kitchen equipment, furniture and speakers for another manufacturer. Not bad for someone who became an internationally recognised, prize-winning designer almost completely by accident
Amongst many other successful Bang & Olufsen creations, Henning Moldenhawer was responsible for the revolutionary Beomaster 900 – a long, low and fully transistorised mains radio, which played immediately – with no warm-up necessary, as was the case with the radio tubes – was an achievement in itself. In addition, the design concept challenged all established ideas for radio design. The new Beomaster 900 marked a revolution.
It was the architect Henning Moldenhawer who, for the first time in the history of radio, extended the front all the way out to the sides of the unit, breaking with the traditional framing of the front which all radios, TVs and loudspeakers had been using until then. This motif was retraced in Bang & Olufsen’s future design language. It was even repeated graphically in the company’s advertisements.
Beomaster 900 became a European-wide success. At the same time – and much to the company’s surprise – its share of the Danish market did not fall. On the contrary, it rose significantly – at a time when the last of the remaining Danish manufacturers went to the wall. Proof indeed that design is not only for connoisseurs, but is a universal language, at least when applied with talent and as an expression of the product’s conceptual content, i.e. making the product itself a communicator.
Here, in addition, we also have a short Biography of Henning Moldenhawer, kindly submitted to BeoWorld by Mr Steen Rønn.
This was translated from Danish, so please forgive any grammatical errors!
Henning Moldenhawer was born in 1914, the Son of a forest supervisor in the Frijsenborgwoods at Hammel near Aarhus in Jutland. As a boy he loved to explore the woods and to experiment with the wood he found; one of his favourite occupations was to build pushcars. As a grown up he also had a weakness for cars and motorbikes.
At 11 years old he was sent to boarding school in Sealand but hated the authoritarian form that marked schooling and leisure there. After one an a half years in grammar school it became too much for him : He was longing for the freedom of the woods and stopped attending the school – much against his parents’ will. He then passed an examination after 10th class at the local school in Hammel.
He went to Copenhagen, where he became an apprentice bricklayer, but he left the job before he got his apprenticeship and got a job as boy on a shipyard.
In 1936 he enrolled at the school of architecture in Copenhagen, but he never actually commenced study as his girlfriend discovered she was pregnant. They were married, and he was forced to find a job to make their living. Through a comrade he got a job at an architects office, but moved swiftly when a job at the drawing office of professor Palle Suenson (1904-87, architect, teacher at the architect school from 1934, headmaster of the Royal Academy of Art 1965-65) became vacant.
While working for Palle Suenson he later sent exercises for evaluation and became (on the basis of these) a member of the Academic Architect Society in 1949.
In 1948 he left his job at Palle Suenson’s drawing office as he and a colleaque, Mogens Hammer, wanted to establish their own drawing office. It was difficult to start a new business, and all the time they seeked eagerly for business. Moldenhawer got a contact to the radio- and televisioncompagny Linnet & Laursen (owned by outbreakers from Bang & Olufsen) and got designjobs here. Later followed work for another radio- and tv-factory, Neutrofon, where he created the Guldsegl-tv.
In 1962 B&Os Jens Bang got an eye on Moldenhawer and gave him the task to design the new transistorated mains receiver Beomaster 900. A few more radios followed and after that televisionsets with a so far never seen timeless design.
In 1966 the designer Jacob Jensen didn’t have work for a member of his staff, David Lewis, and Lewis got a job at Moldenhawer’s drawingoffice. Together they designed epochmaking tv-sets for B&O, parallel to Jacob Jensen’s famous radio-designing for B&O. In 1980 Lewis went solo and took the customer B&O with him.
I 1983 Moldenhawer got ill and died after a short sickbed, 69 years old.
