How to use the auto-brake - instruction card

In addition to the instruction leaflet to be given to a customer with the HMV102 machine, another instruction label was tied to the brake lever. This contains important directions to make sure the user would know how to use the machine with this advanced, new auto-brake feature. (When new, an additional factory inspection 'OK' card would have been attached to the carrying handle also.)

The overall instruction leaflet was loose with no obvious place to store it in the machine, so it is almost always lost. On my machine also; no instruction card. The small auto-brake card however was still attached to the brake lever with its little cotton string. Like the machine itself, the card looked a bit 'frayed'. (The almost always missing 'OK' card was also no longer on the carrying handle.)

Whilst the machine itself cleaned up very well so far, the instruction card still looked its age. Even after trying to straighten and iron it out, still a bit tatty.

Now I do like to get a machine back complete and clean looking, including the instructions. So scanned the aged card and with some basic cleaning up in an image editing program, a pristine new card was printed. Printing the image (PDF) on thin card stock, double sided gives four cards. These can be cut out using the outline guide around the text-side.

With a hole-punch and two small squares of paper glued on for strength a new card. A loop of new, similar string to loop over the brake lever. The His Master's Voice 102 gramophone again with clean and readable (yet somewhat cryptic) instructions on using that advanced auto-brake feature. (The string just long enough for the card to hang safely in the horn opening, where the original probably survived all these years.)

For a British machine the label is a surprisingly metric 4.0 x 8.0 cm with 1x1 cm chamfer. The re-enforcing square is again a reassuring half-inch square patch :-)