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Where are you, and is there an audiophile group nearby? I clean records for a few of my friends. Perhaps someone nearby might do the same for limited numbers. Are you talking about 5 or 6, 50, or 500?
I buy LPs occasionally and do not want to invest in record cleaning equipment so I'm willing to pay someone else to do professional cleaning and I'm seeking recommendations. I found services called Record Genie, Perfect Vinyl Forever, The Vinyl Revivers, and Clean Grooves. If you have experience with these services or you have other suggestions, I'd be interested in your recommendations.
I don’t have any experience with those services, nor any other place where they’d need to be shipped to. However, wouldn’t it get expensive shipping back and forth constantly? I guess it all depends on how many albums and how often.If you have a local vinyl shop, ask them about cleaning. A place near me used to charge a dollar or two to clean records with their Nitty Gritty vacuum cleaning machine. That was about 15 years ago, so their prices may have gone up.If you’ve got a decent amount of records and it’s the cost of the equipment, there are plenty of inexpensive cleaning machines/stuff out there. The VPI and Nitty Gritty machines are quite expensive IMO. I bought a KAB USA Evo-1 about 10 years ago. It’s a Nitty Gritty, only it doesn’t have an onboard vacuum. You attach your own. I just looked it up and it’s currently $169. I don’t remember paying anywhere near that, but maybe my memory’s off. Even at that price, it’s way cheaper than the Nitty Gritty. The Evo-1 works great. And it doesn’t ruin your vacuum. At $169, it’s definitely been worth it for me from purely a cost vs alternatives perspective, and I don’t spin that much vinyl. There’s also the spin-clean if that’s still around for cheaper.I know the $169 Evo-1 isn’t cheap, but if you’ve got a decent sized record collection, it’ll probably pay for itself after a while if you’re shipping records back and forth.Just a thought. If I made the wrong assumptions, I apologize.
I live in southwest Wyoming and I don't know any other audiophiles in my area. Salt Lake City is the closest large city, but that is about 3 hours drive from where I live. I have about 250 LPs to clean and I have a few more I'll be ordering leading up to Christmas.
Albums need to be cleaned more than once. Invest in a manual cleaner like SpinClean if you want an inexpensive option.
Absolutely. They need to be cleaned regularly. No matter how clean they were and how well they were sealed up, they’ll still need a cleaning every so often.I use the KAB Evo-1 and a steam cleaner. I get excellent results. I’ve bought some horrendously dirty albums. I found some of my father’s albums he was hiding in the basement because he got sick of my mother complaining about them taking up space (like she didn’t have any crap that wasn’t being used ). Those albums were moldy and covered in a layer of crud. The steam cleaner flowed by the KAB took great care of them. The looked and sounded practically new, except for some of the labels.I’ll run the KAB every 2-3 times I play an album. If I haven’t listened to it in a while and I’m motivated, I’ll clean it with the KAB regardless.For really nasty records, I’m not sure how meticulous a company is going to be. Are they going to be as OCD about it as I am, or are they going to run it through the machine once or twice and say “that’s good enough?” I’d rather do it myself with inferior equipment.
What steam cleaner do you use? The Spin Clean and the KAB both have good reviews. Not sure if one is better than the other.
I've used the Record Genie for a number of years. He usually stops by Audio Video Therapy Nashua NH once a month to clean records and has a mailing service. Price is $5 for a single cleaning. You also get a new record sleeve w/your LP's. Excellent service.
