I still have mine, I think from the time of a Pioneer PL12D. Strangely it seems to cause static on some discs, but not others. It took a bit of practice to get the drag over the label and lift, good enough that I never tried any others.
As regards wet cleaning, I do new and old, there seems to be an uplift with both. I will repeat wash if I feel necessary, maybe that comes from living with cats and in an area where motorway, railway and quarry seem give higher than normal dust levels.
Cleaning the stylus, there have been some negative reports about the gel type cleaners in other forums, I think after a review in a US magazine. I generally use the brush supplied by AT and have both Goldring and AT vibrators if my ears suggest something is not right.
Same here. Bit of a knack. Can generate static - in which case, these days, I am likely to wet clean (using another vintage cleaner - a Watts Manual Parastat - with āblueā cleaning fluid, co.o The Bay).
New - ? Does not compute hereā¦ Only old allowedā¦
For a quick clean of the stylus (fluff, etc) , the (upside down) Decca brush is goodā¦ For serious muck, its the AT 637. I also have a Discwasher SC2 stylus brush, but its not in useā¦
To be fair, there have been negative reports about anything that anyone uses. I used the AT vibrator before the gel pad and mentioned it on this very forum, a number of members converged on me with pitch forks.
Can you remember what was said about the gel pads?
Two reports, one with pictures of a residue on the stylus. I read that on LP12 pages of another site.
The other anecdotal of someone taking their deck for a service because of mistracking, the stylus covered in a hard deposit, removed with āgreen paperā.
I started cleaning new for two reasons, static so strong I was cutting the paper liner open and the increasing number of discs with tiny bits of swarf on them.
I was surprised to hear a difference, most notable when I bought some of the Back To Black series of re-releases, discs that on first play felt bass light sounded much better after cleaning.
Leviās used to recommend that customers never wash their jeans!
Their recommendation was to put them in a freezer for a day or two to kill off the bacteria that could make them a bit āfunkyā. Danger warning: could result in frozen assets!
IIRC, before creating āGreen Stuffā (official product name), Linn recommended using the fine-grain abrasive strip on a matchbook for scraping the melted vinyl off your stylus.
I probably always had the new ones, not sure as some packing still had the old style. I actually like that it pokes out as it makes it easier IMHO to slide the disc in and out. Though the coolest thing is that the closed end is rounded and easily fits into the original sleeves (while square ones always crumple up annoyingly)
I never got on with the Nagaoka semi-circle type - because, if I read you correctly, I put them in wrongly: with the open edge at the closed top of the LP cover, hence the top corner creasing up - it never occurred to me to put them in with the opening same as the LP cover (& dust ingress I would think).
No I do put them in like you, open edge of the inner sleeve at the closed top of the cover. I meant that the Nagoakaās rounded, closed end makes it easy to get the Nagaoka into the inner sleeve in the first place (while the unsupported corners of square ones tend to crumple up because they are not held in place by the record), and that the Nagaokaās open end poking out of the inner sleeve makes it easier for me to get the record back into the inner sleeve (within the Nagaoka and not bypassing it)
But I donāt have the open edge creasing up, there is enough space:
I picked this record at random and it might be particularly generous there, but I donāt remember having a problem ever with any record, and I have bagged about 500 into Nagaokas over the past 1.5 years. (Some covers are of course too tight, but those are a pain even without Nagaokas anyway and doesnāt seem to make it significantly worse)
Ahā¦I must be confusing Nagaoka with anotherā¦no paper on the ones Iāve used. I donāt have a photo but they look like a clear poly upturned D. Popular in Japanese records.
Or, looking againā¦you put the D sleeve inside a paper one?
Thereās no paper on the Nagaoka. The paper in the pictures is the albumās original inner sleeve. The Nagaoka is inside it, thatās their whole point
