[Hank[_4_]]

In article ,
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Nil wrote:

Yikes! It would never have occurred to me to clean a record with glue.
I did find several videos on Youtube, and I guess the idea is plausible
- instead of wiping or scraping debris out of the grooves, the dirt
would be lifted straight out with potentially less damage to the
plastic. I'm still a little skeptical, but I may try it on an
expendable record one of these days.

It works well. You can get a higher grade PVA material that is specifically
designed for the application and stays flexible longer, but the glue will
work.

This is a thing, though, that you would want to do filthy records that you
got at a yard sale. It's something you do when you are worried about the
record possibly contaminating the cleaning machine.

You can also just do a soap and water cleaning before putting it in the
machine as well; it's not as effective as an ultrasonic machine or the glue
peel, but it's okay and it will prevent your vacuum machine from getting
gunked up.

I've cleaned up some pretty grungy LP's with a soap, water, and ammonia
solution. After the surface has soaked for a few minutes, I flush the
solution off with warm tap water and swabbing in the direction of the
grooves with a clean kitchen sponge. Once the surface looks relatively
clean (I've had to repeat the process on occasion), it's time to use the
vacuum washer on the disc. On a few occasions, I've had adhesive crap
on the disc surface which needed a solvent like 3M Adhesive Remover.
ALWAYS test the disk surface in something like the runout area with the
solvent on a Q-tip before using it on the recorded groove areas.

If doing 78's (shellac disks) DON'T use ammonia, as ammonia dissolves
shellac. It's OK with vinyl and styrene.

If you play records, you need a vacuum machine. It is the greatest sound
improvement you can get for the investment. The difference is stunning,
and you can buy an old Nitty Gritty Record Doctor for $100 or so.

At your suggestion, Scott (actually, insistence), I bought a Nitty
Gritty vacuum machine a few years ago. I'm astounded at the results.
Almost all the LP's I've done with the Nitty Gritty play incredibly
well, considering the abuse some of them have had.

The fancy machines are faster and easier to use than the Record Doctor,
but if you only have a few records now and then, the Record Doctor will
clean as well as the fancy machines.

Actually, I've felt that the base level Nitty Gritty, which you have to
rotate manually, to be superior to the fancier motor-driven ones. Some
of the LP's I've used it on have had more problems on one area than on
others, and a bit of back-and-forth attention ultimately did clean them
up pretty well.

For playback, I have a Yamaha P751 direct drive turntable, equipped with
a Stanton 681 EEE Mk III cartridge and an elliptical stylus. The
cartridge replaces a Bang & Olufsen cartridge that had a conical stylus,
and gives a much cleaner audio stream. Nothing particularly "high-end"
about this setup.

Hank