[wightstraker]

I'd like to hear some opinions on the merit and/or evils of liquid LP
cleaners? I've heard people both praise and condemn them. What's the
back story here? Do spray-on cleaners really work? Or do they do
damage to the LP?

[Serge Auckland]

"wightstraker" wrote in message
ps.com...
I'd like to hear some opinions on the merit and/or evils of liquid LP
cleaners? I've heard people both praise and condemn them. What's the
back story here? Do spray-on cleaners really work? Or do they do
damage to the LP?


The problem with any spray-on cleaners is getting the stuff off the record
after cleaning. Having tried just about everything over the years, I've
found that the only method that seems to work properly is the wet-vacuum
method of a cleaning machine.

Here's mine

http://audiopages.googlepages.com/RCM.JPG/RCM-full.jpg

With this machine, you first rotate the record and wet one side of the
record with a water/alcohol mixture, rubbing it well into the grooves using
the soft brush provided. Turn the record over, start the turntable and start
the vacuum, and the wet stuff with the dirt in it is sucked off the record
leaving it clean and dry. Whilst the record is rotating and Side 1 is being
vacuumed, wet and scrub side 2. Turn the record over and let Side 2 be
vacuumed clean. Use a new plastic inner sleeve, and your LP is as clean
(cleaner!) than a new one. I use it for all my record purchases before
playing, whether used or new.

You can buy the machine ready-built, or if you're a bit handy with the
woodwork, you can buy the kit and make the box yourself saving £100 or more.

I can recommend thr Moth RCM I use, there are others out there that I'm sure
will do as good a job, I just don't have the experience of them.

By the way, these machines can be *incredibly* noisy- mine measures 100dBC
standing in front of it - so wear ear defenders when in use.

If you're thinking of wet playing your records, then don't!!!! Wet playing
means that the dirt at the bottom of the groove gets turned into mud, and
you play the grooves through the mud. When the record dries, the mud sets
hard, so the record then *must* be played wet or it's unplayable. So, once
played wet, always played wet. Also, some cantilevers don't like all that
wet stuff and corrode. Don't even go there.

S.

[Dave Platt]

In article om,
wightstraker wrote:

I'd like to hear some opinions on the merit and/or evils of liquid LP
cleaners? I've heard people both praise and condemn them. What's the
back story here? Do spray-on cleaners really work? Or do they do
damage to the LP?

I think it depends very much on the specific liquids used in the
cleaner, and on how efficiently you remove the liquids after cleaning.

I've had good results using a Disk Doctor II (basically a low-end
manual-rotation Nitty Gritty machine), with either the
manufacturer-provided cleaning liquid or with my own homebrewed
substitute. The cleaning liquid consists of demineralized (distilled
or deionized) water, some amount (about 25%) of isopropyl alcohol, and
a small amount of a low-residue surfactant. It's applied to the
surface, brushed into the grooves, and then vacuumed off. It's
effective at removing dust and light soil.

For records which are really cruddy (e.g. used ones with fingerprints
or tobacco-smoke tar) or which have mildew buildup due to improper
storage, or new ones with some amount of mold-release compound left in
the grooves) I will pre-wash the surface with a more
aggressive/thorough detergent solution, rinse well, and then
wet/brush/vacuum as above.

Some people believe that any use of alcohol on vinyl record surfaces
is a Bad Thing, due to the possibility that it will result in leaching
out of plasticizers within the vinyl and cause the vinyl to become
more brittle and thus to wear more rapidly during play. Other people
feel that the use of some alcohol is OK, as long as the solution isn't
left in contact with the record surface for more than a short time.

Removing the fluid, and whatever dust or other gunk it has freed from
the grooves, is very important to a good cleaning. If you don't use a
system which removes the dirty liquid efficiently, the dirt will just
be redeposited in the grooves and the record may well sound worse than
before.

I'm not fond of the Discwasher system, in which the fluid is used to
moisten a brush which then scrubs the grooves. It seems adequate to
remove loose dust but I don't think it's efficient at getting off
anything actually stuck to the record surface (e.g. fingerprints), and
I don't feel that it removes the dirty liquid all that efficiently.

I haven't tried any of the spray-on cleaners currently on the market
for that purpose... using a bottled liquid and then vacuuming is more
thorough, I believe, and more economical on a per-use basis (although
the vacuuming machine does come at a significant expense).

There are numerous recipes on the net for home-made liquid cleaners.
Some of them recommend the use of Kodak Photo-flo as a surfactant, but
I've read that this is probably not a good idea because Photo-flo
tends to leave a film/residue in the grooves. A laboratory-grade
detergent such as Triton X-100 is probably a better choice.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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