Record cleaner demo

[3db]

Has anyone tried this product before?

 

[timoteo]

No i havent but from the video it looks like it does a good job. I think the trick is using the right cleaner. I normally fill my kitchen sink with warm water & dish soap, use a microfiber cloth & wipe in a circular motion then rinse with clean water & dry with another microfiber cloth. Home depot has a 48 pack of MF cloths for about $12.

Even though i do that i would still be willing to try the SpinClean depending on its price. The before/after sound on the video was better but not much (if any) beter than my process. But there is no magic way to get old records to sound new. At least non that im aware of. Id like to know what that cleaning solution is made of since you dont have to rinse it off. Seems that toward the end of a session youd leave dirt, from the previous records, on them. Still interesting product though!!

 

[TLS Guy]

There really is no inexpensive way of wet cleaning an LP.

Cecil Watts did the most extensive research on this. This was his lifetimes work and he used electron micrographs in his research.

It boils down to this.

The only satisfactory fluid is alcohol.

Soaps and detergents do more harm than good, because they loosen dirt and drive it deeper in the groove where it creates more noise. It also leaves a sticky residue that attracts more dirt. So while a disc may initially sound better it will worsen over time and be resistant to further cleaning as the dirt is pushed further in the groove.

All liquid solutions float dirt in the the depths of the groove where it makes the problem worse.

So you need a fluid that evaporates and leaves NO residue.

While the fluid evaporates the disc must be subjected to powerful vacuum.

The Keith Monks cleaner which was based entirely on Cecil Watts research was the first successful record cleaner. All good wet cleaning methods since have embodied these principles.

As to the video, I detected only marginal improvement and that was still a disc I would not want to play. I would bet that it won't be long before the disc is back to its pre cleaning sate and likely worse.

 

[timoteo]

Thanks TLS Guy for that info. I had no clue that so much research had been done on the cleaning of records. Thats interesting that detergents & soaps leave a residue that can worsen the sound & that the dirt gets imbedded even deeper sometimes. I would have thought that alcohol could damage the vinyl.

Before i clean anymore records im going to look up more information on this topic!

 

[TLS Guy]

Thanks TLS Guy for that info. I had no clue that so much research had been done on the cleaning of records. Thats interesting that detergents & soaps leave a residue that can worsen the sound & that the dirt gets imbedded even deeper sometimes. I would have thought that alcohol could damage the vinyl.

Before i clean anymore records im going to look up more information on this topic!

Isopropyl alcohol and blended with pure distilled water will not damage vinyl or leave a residue.

In years when smoking was more prevalent, playing records in a smoking environment, was about the fastest way to noisy surfaces.

Cecil Watts found that alcohol is the best solvent. I would bet many used LPs on offer suffer from this malady.

 

[Swerd]

Detergent solutions do work at dissolving dirt and greasy deposits that accumulate on LP surfaces. But the problem with detergent solutions is that most people use far too much detergent. If the solutions gets sudsy, you have too much detergent.

It has to do with a property of detergents in water, called the critical micelle concentration (CMC). For many detergents (such as common liquid dish detergent), the CMC is very low, a few drops of concentrate to a gallon of water. Adding more detergent above the CMC level does not clean things better and makes rinsing off the excess detergent a problem. If you have hard water that contains various salts of limestone, it becomes a worse problem. Calcium in the lime salts forms an insoluble complex with detergents that commonly have a negative charge on them.

Washing LPs in dilute detergent solutions does work. You should rinse them afterwards, first with cold water, and then with isopropyl alcohol (1 part) diluted in 3 parts distilled or deionized water. That should remove the remaining detergent and prevent residue from building up on the LP surfaces.

 

[slipperybidness]

I recently purchased the spin clean but haven't used it yet. I will re-post with results when I have a chance.

 

[3db]

I recently purchased the spin clean but haven't used it yet. I will re-post with results when I have a chance.

I'd be most interested sicen I buy a lot of my vinyl used, espcially blues.

 

[slipperybidness]

TLS question

There really is no inexpensive way of wet cleaning an LP.

So you need a fluid that evaporates and leaves NO residue.

While the fluid evaporates the disc must be subjected to powerful vacuum.



How do you recommend getting fingerprints and oil off of records for someone that just doesn't have the funds available now for an expensive record cleaning machine?

 

[slipperybidness]

Detergent solutions do work at dissolving dirt and greasy deposits that accumulate on LP surfaces. But the problem with detergent solutions is that most people use far too much detergent. If the solutions gets sudsy, you have too much detergent.

It has to do with a property of detergents in water, called the critical micelle concentration (CMC). For many detergents (such as common liquid dish detergent), the CMC is very low, a few drops of concentrate to a gallon of water. Adding more detergent above the CMC level does not clean things better and makes rinsing off the excess detergent a problem. If you have hard water that contains various salts of limestone, it becomes a worse problem. Calcium in the lime salts forms an insoluble complex with detergents that commonly have a negative charge on them.

Washing LPs in dilute detergent solutions does work. You should rinse them afterwards, first with cold water, and then with isopropyl alcohol (1 part) diluted in 3 parts distilled or deionized water. That should remove the remaining detergent and prevent residue from building up on the LP surfaces.

Yup, you are absolutely correct on this CMC business (I suspect you have a bit of lab or chemistry background?). I would even venture to say that 80-90% of people use too much detergents on anything that they clean. Has anyone heard stories about the new fancy washers that know how long the rinse cycle should be due to sensors on the drain? It's common for the first few cycles to take hrs b/c the people used the same amount of detergent that they always did and they had always been using way too much. They have to re-train themselves to use much less so that the washer can rinse it away properly and quickly.

Also, note that if you are below the CMC then that is a problem too, you won't have the proper surfactant properties to remove the oil and make is soluble in the cleaning solution.

 

[Swerd]

How do you recommend getting fingerprints and oil off of records for someone that just doesn't have the funds available now for an expensive record cleaning machine?

Instead of wasting money on vacuum cleaning devices of dubious value, I think an ultrasonic cleaner (also called a bath sonicator), filled with a dilute detergent solution, would do the job much better. It must be large enough to dip in a record halfway. And you still must rinse off the detergent.

Yup, you are absolutely correct on this CMC business (I suspect you have a bit of lab or chemistry background?). I would even venture to say that 80-90% of people use too much detergents on anything that they clean.

Of course I am . I've had more than 25 years of lab experience in biochemistry.

 

[slipperybidness]

FYI, I am a chemist by education and currently work in the semiconductor industry. I've been in industry for 10yrs and labs for 15. Some of our chips make it into the pioneer recievers.

 

[Adam]

Some of our chips make it into the pioneer recievers.

Only some? Are the others too ruined by detergent to sell to Pioneer?

J/K!

 

[Swerd]

FYI, I am a chemist by education and currently work in the semiconductor industry. I've been in industry for 10yrs and labs for 15. Some of our chips make it into the pioneer recievers.

I know nothing about manufacturing integrated circuits and microchips, but I suspect they might be more fragile than the analog audio information stamped in record grooves.

 

[3db]

I recently purchased the spin clean but haven't used it yet. I will re-post with results when I have a chance.

Any updates? I buy a lot of used blues s albums and this would be a benefit to me if it works.

 

[slipperybidness]

Any updates? I buy a lot of used blues s albums and this would be a benefit to me if it works.

NO, I'm quite busy with the holidays and getting the lab techs lined out so I can hopefully have some peaceful time off for the weekend.

Maybe I can experiment on Monday. I will re-post whenever I have some info.

 

[slipperybidness]

Only some? Are the others too ruined by detergent to sell to Pioneer?

J/K!

Haha. No, most of our chips go to the automotive industry. (Obviously) I meant that some of our PRODUCTS go into the pioneers. In fact my Pioneer elite has one of our chips in it. And cleaning semiconductors involves very pure chemicals (I deal with trace contamination analysis) such as strong acids and bases, but really no detergents.

Does kinda raise the question on using a dilute acid bath on vinyl? Perhaps some dilute vinegar?

 

[slipperybidness]

Tried it out

I finally had time to give it a try.

I used distilled water and about 2.5 caps of cleaner soln (instructions said to use 3). I started with the cleanest of the dirty records and worked to the dirtiest last. I did notice that the dirtiest took 2 cycles through the thing to get them clean. There was dirt in the bottom of the solution when I was done.

In general, it seems to have done a pretty good job. I decided to put distilled water in a spray bottle and give each side of the record a good spray-down rinse after the wash, as I was afraid that residue would dry on the records. Visually the records looked much better, but I didn't have time to play them yet. I will update once I do.

I think next time I will try to fill the trough with isopropyl alcohol instead and see how that does.

The brushes and solution are good and it does the trick. I really don't think it does any better than you can do by hand, it is pretty much a manual method anyway. It is nice the way it holds the records up and keeps the label from getting wet. But, at the $80 I paid for it I must admit that it is over-priced. If you are on a budget, then just do it by hand. If you are a stickler or have the money to spare, then it does seem to perform as advertised.

 

[3db]

I finally had time to give it a try.

I used distilled water and about 2.5 caps of cleaner soln (instructions said to use 3). I started with the cleanest of the dirty records and worked to the dirtiest last. I did notice that the dirtiest took 2 cycles through the thing to get them clean. There was dirt in the bottom of the solution when I was done.

In general, it seems to have done a pretty good job. I decided to put distilled water in a spray bottle and give each side of the record a good spray-down rinse after the wash, as I was afraid that residue would dry on the records. Visually the records looked much better, but I didn't have time to play them yet. I will update once I do.

I think next time I will try to fill the trough with isopropyl alcohol instead and see how that does.

The brushes and solution are good and it does the trick. I really don't think it does any better than you can do by hand, it is pretty much a manual method anyway. It is nice the way it holds the records up and keeps the label from getting wet. But, at the $80 I paid for it I must admit that it is over-priced. If you are on a budget, then just do it by hand. If you are a stickler or have the money to spare, then it does seem to perform as advertised.

The real test will be how they sound after the cleaning.

 

[slipperybidness]

I tried a few last night. Definitely improved the sound quality. But I would only consider wet cleaning the dirtiest of records. Several were so dirty that I would not put them on my turntable before cleaning first so I don't have a before/after on those.

But, I think you can do just as good a job manually. The spin clean is nice and it makes the job much easier. $80 is a little pricy, I would think it would be a no-brainer if it were more like $40.