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I use warm tap water, dawn, and one of those flat "edger" paint brushes from Lowes or home depot. Those things really get into the grooves. I just put a squirt of soap on the brush and rub it around. I then apply water to the LP, lay it on a towel, and run the brush in circles around it a few times. More if it was exceptionally dirty (Goodwill finds fit into this category sometimes). I then rinse with warm plain tap water and dry somewhat with a towel. The only reason I dry it is because since I don't use distilled water, the less water that is left, the less residue is left. This has worked wonders on some records. I'm talking dead quiet after using this. The most amazing was an old copy of Annie Get Your Gun from around 1960 with Doris Day. It sounds brand new and almost like a Sheffield recording. And it was a $.25 goodwill find.BTW, this is my first post here. I couldn't find a "welcome new members" forum, so here I am...
Welcome Not Insane. Soapy water and a good brush work pretty well for a simple way of cleaning. But nothing beats ultrasonic followed by vacuuming.
Tried a Kirmuss Audio ultrasonic cleaner and returned it as it is brutally slow. By the time you get it set up with distilled water and alcohol, run the pulse cycles, and clean two LPs (often just one album!), the machine starts overheating and takes an eternity to cool down. The Upscale Audio version that can do 3 LPs instead of 2 simultaneously would help, but still a very time-consuming process. And it is extremely noisy, so you can't do it while listening or within earshot of your family. Oh, and the tiny bottle of surfactant that is 99% distilled water is maybe enough to do about 25-35 albums depending on how many cycles they require, at which point Kirmuss shameless price gouges the refills. Need to find an alternative at some point and will likely go back to one of the vacuum systems like my old Okki Nokki. That thing was great.
Last night I had a few older friends over that loved music but are not audiophiles. We were playing old vinyl - everything from "The Music Man" to "Tijuana Brass" to "The Bee Gees". Some of these albums were never cleaned in any fashion, so the noisier ones I ran through the Nitty Gritty machine. They all noted how much more musical, cleaner, clearer they sounded as well as how much less surface noise there was after cleaning. So, if non audiophiles define the sound "obviously better", a good record cleaning machine is something you should own, if you don't already. I have also found that a really good successful cleaning results in simply dead quiet between tracks. Case in point - Remember the Tijuana Brass album "Whipped Cream and other Delights"? That album is over 50 years old but it is still very quiet between tracks. Keep in mind that the album lived for years without ever being cleaned. Comments?
This does take time, no question about it; a good 5 to 8 minutes per album. I would love to get a Degritter Ultrasonic Cleaner but I am not willing to part with that much cash. That being said, every time I clean an album, I start thinking "you know, it isn't really that expensive....."Comments?
At $3K plus shipping a Degritter is way to rich for my blood.I suppose I could try the DIY ultrasonic solutions or maybe a Kirmussaudio.com machine. At under $900 it's a lot cheaper, but still a lot of money.