Hello everybody, I'm from brazil. You can't imagine the problem is to obtain solutions that in my country about gramophones ... Very well, recently acquired portable gramophone hmv 102 (b/12 of 1948) with reproducer 5b. cleaned and put grease on mainspring, its really wonderful. But the problem is the "auto brake". the brake works only sometimes ...
some questions:
What can I do?
No.5b player is in perfect condition, only that sometimes sounds bad, is it necessary to change something?
The spring system necessarily need to play the two sides of the discs?
Você pode ter melhor ajuda se você postar no seguinte forum para aqueles que vivem no Reino Unido como eles estão mais familiarizados com as máquinas HMV.
Pode ser necessário para reconstruir a sua caixa de som/reprodutor 5b para obter o melhor som, ou você pode comprar um no Ebay. Aqui está uma para venda agora:
There were two types of brake fitted to the 102. The first one was very unreliable, and was quickly replaced by the second version. The first one had no "auto brake on/off" control, and there was no seperate manual brake fitted to the machine. If this is the one you have, then you will probably never get it to work 100% of the time, but if you have the later type, then they are much easier to fix. You will see under the turntable that the fork of the autobrake is fixed to a pivot, with a central screw. Remove the screw and you will see a very thin spring washer with three "legs" on it's edge. Remove this, and underneath is a very thin (and very fragile) fibre washer. Very carefully remove that, and then remove the arm that goes towards the centre of the turntable. Under that is another fibre washer, which you remove (again, very carefully).Then remove the chromium fork. Clean all the parts with white spirit, alcohol, or WD40, and reassemble. Repeat, be very careful with the fibre washers, they are very fragile, and will snap if not treated with care.. The two fibre washers provide the grip between the moving parts, and are esssential. Before replacing the spring washer with the "legs", bend each leg downwards a little, which will put extra pressure on the mechanism. Replace the central screw, and all should be working again. No parts of the autobrake mechanism should be oiled.
i also have a problem with the autobrake in that it turns on and off manually when you push the tonearm up over to man the brake and it disengages when you pull the tonearm down to the start of the record but it wont do it automatically when it gets to the centre of the record any clues i have cleanes it totally with wd40.
designerweddingdj wrote:i also have a problem with the autobrake in that it turns on and off manually when you push the tonearm up over to man the brake and it disengages when you pull the tonearm down to the start of the record but it wont do it automatically when it gets to the centre of the record any clues i have cleanes it totally with wd40.
Follow the instructions given above. All HMV 102 autobrakes (apart from the aforementioned early ones) are the same.
Does anybody know where one can get replacements for the fiber washers for the brake? Mine was acting up (stopping before record was over) so I disassembled/cleaned/reassembed as advised by Phono48. It's working much better now but those washers don't look like they're long for this world!
AllWoundUp wrote:Does anybody know where one can get replacements for the fiber washers for the brake? Mine was acting up (stopping before record was over) so I disassembled/cleaned/reassembed as advised by Phono48. It's working much better now but those washers don't look like they're long for this world!
Thanks,
Mark
I would second this. I disassembled mine and while both washers are not broken, the top one is cracked. (Graham Barber, of Restore-A-Gram- told me he's made them out of thin card and had them work fine, but something a little more to "specs" would be my preference.)
I have taken mine apart and cleaned most of the parts (except the fiber washers) with rubbing alcohol, but my autobrake still doesn't trip on the runout or eccentric groove, even though it stops the turntable when the tonearm is all the way in, and releases it when I swing the tonearm all the way out.
UPDATE: I traced the upper washer onto thin card stock and cut that out with an art scalpel. To my great surprise, this worked flawlessly! My autobrake now performs as intended.
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Very well, recently acquired portable gramophone hmv 102 (b/12 of 1948) with reproducer 5b. cleaned and put grease on mainspring, its really wonderful. But the problem is the "auto brake". the brake works only sometimes ... 
