Beomaster 1900

Beomaster 1900 is a very famous B&O product, and one of the most successful in terms of sales. When launched, its radical appearance marked a true departure in receiver design, and its descendants remained part of the Beomaster range for over 20 years. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

As well as being an all-new model technically, Beomaster 1900 established a new division in the Beomaster range. It was too powerful and too expensive to sit happily in the “Audio” range (amongst models such as the Beomaster 1100), but lacked the facilities and ultimate quality for the “High Fidelity” range, so it became a range in itself. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

The most obvious technical innovation was the touch sensitive controls. These worked smoothly and reliably, using a technique which would in time come to be known as “sensi-touch”. The controls are not pressure sensitive and do not work by reflected light or conduction. When one touches the panel, one’s whole body becomes an antenna, which couples random electrical noise into a plate just beneath the Beomaster’s front panel. This turns on a sensitive transistor which then instigates the desired function. The touch sensitive controls operated electronic signal switches, very similar to those used in Beomaster 6000 4 channel. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

Another attractive feature of Beomaster 1900 is that the functions were divided into “primary” and “secondary” groups, with the primary functions arranged on the front panel and the secondary functions concealed under a full width aluminium lift up lid. Secondary functions included the tuning of 5 FM stations, treble, bass and balance control, AFC/FM stereo selection etc. The position of the sliding controls for treble, bass and balance could be seen without opening the lid on the light displays on the control panel. They looked like “electronic” readouts but were in fact made from clear plastic film carefully printed with a black pattern, and a red lamp behind. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

When launched, a suitable cassette recorder was not available to match the Beomaster 1900, so Beocord 1100 had to be used instead. Beocord 1900 came later, and while it had a similar appearance to the Beomaster, the height was different so it wasn’t quite a perfect match. Furthermore, it could not be wall mounted, unlike the Beomaster for which a special bracket was available. Beogram 1900, and later Beogram 1902, were the recommended turntables. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

Such was the demand for Beomaster 1900 that production of the remote controlled version (Beomaster 2400) had to be delayed. The design remained in production with only minor alterations for many years, and was only changed substantially when Beomaster 2000 appeared. Text copyright © Beocentral. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.