Record Cleaning (Ohhhh yes that old chestnut again)
While i've always believed that any record cleaning process is better than non at all, i must admit that non in my humble opinion are perfect. Back in the 70's and 80's we used the velvet brush and that little bottle of liquid, it got the rough off but that was about it, no real deep cleaning.
About 10 or so years ago i tried the PVA technique, it was ok and got a lot of ground in dirt out but was very messy and took ages to dry so you couldn't do a big batch, then i got a Knosti Disco Antistat which essentially is a manual fluid bath and brush technique, the problem here was the drying times again, and the fact that there wasn't a rinse tank although i've known people buy 2 units, 1 for wash and 1 for rinse, but essentially it's a manual process and it's a bit messy, although having said that for about £70 if you're on a tight budget it will give you good results in my opinion.
After the Knosti i bought a Ultrasonic bath type cleaner, like most mine was a commercially available 6ltr bath with a motor and spindle assembly made to turn the records, the results are good I must say, however there isn't a dryer or a rinse bath, so dirt suspended in the cleaning fluid can and will stick, usually towards the centre of the record, so regular filtering of dirty cleaning liquid is necessary and there's 6lts of it so it can get expensive.
A few days ago i saw a Project VC-S vacuum cleaning machine for a very reasonable price, so decided to get it, my idea being to carry out a 2 stage clean and dry, that should give the best of both worlds, by using the VC-S 1st, then rinsing in the ultrasonic tank filled only with distilled water, then a final vacuum dry my LP's should be as clean as possible, ok it isn't as simple as some of the very expensive machines, but the combined cleaning process should give me clean records every time and without having them sat drying and potentially attracting more dust.
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Originally Posted by Jimbo
