Hey orthobiz-
Thanks for your generosity in providing the Endozime.
The short story:Endozime might or might not help your LPs.
The long story:
I ended up mixing mine at the rate of 1/2 oz. to a quart, which, although only half the strength that others used is still double the product's mixing instructions. At that strength the solution:
did as good a job of cleaning dirt, grime, and fingerprints off of my kitchen cupboards as full strength concentrated "Simple Green" does;
dried without leaving a trace when sprayed on a clean mirror;
easily cleaned grease off of the mirror when applied by rubbing my fingers across my greasy fore-head and then wiping them on the mirror;
did a super job of cleaning off the ring in the bathtub.
I spent the whole day cleaning and playing LPs (8 albums).
Four of the eight LPs were "pre-owned" albums recorded between 1967 and 1970, and purchased recently on ebay. They are well-worn and beat up. I had previously cleaned them with my Nitty Gritty, and then hand-scrubbed them using the same cleaning fluid because they were still noisy as hell. I use distilled water mixed 1:1 with the commonly available 70% isopropyl alcohol and 2-3 drops of Dawn per quart. Surprising me, hand scrubbing these four had yielded no improvement over the RCM cleaning. And I use a good brush (old LAST applicators).
So these previously unsuccesfully cleaned old ebay LPs were cleaned with Endozime today in the following manner before playing:
Place on a flat piece of acrylic into the kitchen sink and thoroughly scrub (moderate to firm pressure, two minutes per side) using old LAST Record Preservative applicators. I don't worry about getting the labels wet. It doesn't hurt them as long as you don't over-do it. They dry quickly.
Thoroughly rinse by spraying warm water from the sink's sprayer directly on the vinyl at any angle I choose. Then they are rushed to the Nitty Gritty to be vacuumed dry. Hey, I'm not gonna BUY distilled rinse water! Ridiculous.
If I can spray tap water onto a mirror and vacuum it off leaving no traces I figure I can do the same with my vinyl. When these ebay albums were played today there was a BIG change. Big reduction in number of pops, huge drop in the noise floor. Very nice. 100% better.
The remaining four were from the collection I've had for about 30 years and all were purchased new by me and extremely well-cared for. They were cleaned today in the same way as the other four. I detected no drop in number of pops and no reduction in the noise floor. Apparently I've kept them clean enough they're as good as they can get.
The last album played today was also the first album played. I first played it without applying Endozime. Playing it at the end of the day I first cleaned it with Endozime. It was recorded through my reference Juli@ soundcard into the computer both times at 24/88.2, and both files were opened in my audio editor. Confirming what my ears were telling me, there was no visual indication that the EZ cleaning had reduced the noise floor or changed the number of pops.
The moral of the story:If you have a lot of "pre-owned" LPs which have an unknown history, then Endozime can be very effective in improving the sound. If your collection is largely purchased new by yourself and you've religiously tried your best to keep them clean (this includes using an RCM on them once or twice in the last 10 years) then there's a good chance they already sound fine!
