Where I live, a tiny island in the Caribbean, getting supplies for frivolous items for hi-fi is both long-winded and expensive.
I was thinking of diluting some IPA (not the drinking kind) to use for cleaning some of the fiarly grimy records I have. Then my wife suggested the glasses cleaner spray. So I had a look at the composition and it was made up of IPA, and less than 5% isothiazolinone (MIT and BIT). I beleive isothiazolinone derivitives are anti-microbial.
I tried it on a beat up old record and it worked wonders.
Despite being scratched, dirty and more statically charged than a balloon rubbed on the head of snotty child in a science class, it played perfectly! I was impresed. This was an expendible record so I wasn’t worried if it melted a hole through it.
Before availing myself of a bigger bottle (it’s cheap as chips) I wondered if anyone has any opinion or knows of any downsides?
One thing I should also mention, is that the temp here is generally 30°C all year round during the day, so evaporation is quick (seconds).
I use a very dilute amount of IPA and surfactant (concentrated detergent with no salts added) normally 5% IPA added to distilled water and a few drops of surfactant.
The lens cleaner you mention will do the job but I don’t think the isothiazoline will be adding anything as I think that is an antimicrobial too. I doubt it will do any damage to use it. How long term use will effect things I have no idea but some chemicals can start to harden and change the surface of the vinyl.
With my alcohol mix I do not just use that I also rinse the record with an additional cycle of just distilled water to help wash the cleaning fluid off the record surface. I recommend you do the same if you are going to use the lens cleaning fluid.
I get that comment often… then I remind people that I live at the foot of a volcano that is the biggest killer of people in a single eruption, on a fault line that creates hundreds of earthquakes a year (last big one was 7.4 and I was stuck underground under a big office block locked in the security basement becasue the doors couldn’t open with the swaying of the building) and to add the cherry to the top of the cake, in hurricane alley (I lived through Dean - not fun!).
Yep there are always issues wherever you live and at least here the weather is rarely an extreme event.
I worked in a few different places around the world and in the hot places it could get very tiring living with high daytime temps especially without air-conditioning.
If you’re getting good results, then by all means continue using it. In my experience, the rinse step is as important, and it’s worth using the best quality distilled water you can find. A few years back, I noticed an improvement when I switched from regular pharmacy distilled water to Audio Intelligent Ultra-Pure Water.
For most, we just used use Fairy Liquid / Dawn, diluted 1 to 10, then give several rinse cycles, patting down with a clean lint free cloth each time until the water ‘balled’ away from the vinyl surface. If this didn’t happen in four rinses, repeat with the detergent.
I do not recommend anyone use a washing up liquid like Fairy Liquid as a record cleaning solution it has many chemicals in it including Sodium Chloride (salt) and most brands for instance do not recommend using their product to clean contact lenses or glasses. So I say also not suitable for cleaning sensitive record grooves either even if one does rinse.
But of course with the qualifier of each to their own and they are your records and one is free to do as one wishes.
it would be very helpful for many of us still enjoying vinyl to know more about the ‘hardware’ you use and the procedure. You seem to have gotten very good results, and I am often wondering about how to clean LPs that have followed me for the last 60 years…
Very basic hardware … elbow grease and very clean microfibre cloths.
I placed the vinyl on the sleeve flat, and sprayed onto the cloth for the most part. Cleaning in a circular motion following the grooves as best as one can. A little back and forth on stubborn bits but not too excessive in force.
A couple of particulalry gnarly bits needed me to spray directly on the spot and gently rub back and forth.
Like I said, I think the ambient air temperature works in my favour, allowing for very fast evaporation.
I should have taken a couple of photos. I’ll try to do that this weekend.
If the cloth gets too dirty and washing doesn’t bring it to like new, I buy new one as they’re readily available and cheap. The old ones are repurposed for other cleaning duties.
Before record washing machines, I was warned off domestic washing up liqiuds because they included glycerine (…hands that are as soft as your face…) and was given a lab bottle of Teepol, it was used for washing lab glassware. In those days it was made by Shell. The equivalent now is Teepol L. Dilution something like 1:90 and 5 litre bottles…
I used tap water once. Now I get a white gunk building up on the stylus which quickly makes the record unplayable, which I guess must be limescale. I suppose that’s probably written off that particular vinyl unfortunately, unless anyone here knows differently
I think this fluid would be fine and very close to a commercial record cleaning fluid. I use a cheap manual record washer. If you wanted to go ultra cheap, catch your rain water in a clean bucket and add it to spray bottle (recycle the one you have even) with a small amount of IPA for your cleaning fluid.
My step dad’s son lives in St Martin, if that’s near you.
An ultrasonic cleaning machine or a mechanical cleaning machine with a vacuum device may well help and a mild isopropyl alcohol mix in distilled water say around 5% IPA then a rinse cycle in just distilled water. If you do not want to invest a chunk of money to find out some Hifi and record shops offer a cleaning service so you may be able to try it first.
Thanks, great suggestions. Yeah I was thinking of ultrasonic as a possibility. It must be limescale/calcium on the vinyl as only tap water was used. I have some IPA and distilled water here I could try as well. But given how easy it is to find good replacement vinyl in great condition on ebay or discogs, their’s a limit to how much it’s worthwhile spending…
I beleive isothiazolinone derivitives are anti-microbial.
