What detergent

right, i'm going to get some wetting agent. I have heard of the drill method, but don't have a record clamp - spose i could make something up. But might just leave them to dry for now

 

I had assumed that the folk here asking for solution advise had a wet vacuum cleaner. If not I honestly wouldn’t advise getting your records wet in the first place – the whole point of wet cleaning is to dislodge the muck, suspend it in the wet solution and then suck that solution complete with the muck off the record. The latter is by far the most important stage. If you are simply leaving the records to dry then the crud moved round by cleaning will just settle down in a slightly different place and the record may well sound worse than it did before you started.

Tony.

 

I titally agree with Tony here. You will make the problem worse unless you get the sludge sucked off the record.

 

:beer: :beer: Merry Christmas Bob!!

 

hic!

 

even if you rinse it with distilled water after the solution? Quite a few people do recommend this procedure, if it were pointless surely it wouldn't be recommended by anyone?

 

Yes, even if rinsed. Tony is right, you really ought to use a vac. cleaner if you are going to use a liquid cleaner. Before I got a vac. cleaner (a basic manual one from KABUSA) I'd get a hell of a lot of crud on the stylus after cleaning. Much better results now all the suspended crap is sucked away.

 

Absolutely. Don't use cloths!

Avoid some of the ready made preparations as they tend to leave a film on the disk that creates the ball of gunk on your stylus once you play the records. Some people use a cheap cart to play the washed records once before they go back on normal duty. I haven't got the time or the patience for that.

Besides, I have had no such problems with my method, but as I said, I use the homemade formula and the mad (but efficient!) drill method.

If you think of the Moth machine, all you need is a rotating platter, some washing liquid, a good brush and a vac cleaner.

The AntiStat machine does the same without a platter, washing the records vertically but two sides at a time. It is also easier to rinse them (esp. if you use two antistat machines, still cheaper than the moth) but is not so practical for the vacuum cleaning duties (easier for the drill though ).

I guess it all depends on the amount of records you have to wash and how regularly you will wash records to make sense of what is the best way to go for you. The cheaper methods require a bit more labour.

Still, I know people with the Clearaudio vacuum machine that in badly soiled records will always wash them with an antistat machine first... so ymmv.

The one thing I would do (as others have said) is ALWAYS rinse and ALWAYS dry the records in a way that makes the water/gunk OUT of the record.

HTH,
Jack

 

I use the Knosti in conjunction with the KABUSA vac. thingy. The Knosti, with L'Art du Son mixture, ensures all the crud is loosened and the KAB thing sucks all the rubbish away. Very happy with the results.

 

I've been using RRL Super Vinyl Wash with my Okki Nokki and Disc Doctor brushes.

There is an undeniable improvement, however this falls short of my expectations on the morwe challenging discs - I am considering trying L'Art or Disc Doctor fluid .... any experiences?

One thing does seem clear with my current approach ... some labels pressings do not improve sonically even though they look good visually - particularly Virgin e.g. Tangerine Dream