Vinyl cleaning fluid

Hi-Fi Corner
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Busy getting geared up to get the vinyl collection washed and sleeved in Nagaoka.

Strangely enough distilled water is reasonably hard to find with the lockdown. Will need to buy something random online (as the UK stuff is not available here) and with everything I read here that can have hit and miss results.

Is there any reason not to just use Tonar QS with a Project cleaning machine? That I can easily order.

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You can get distilled water in most supermarkets in the motoring section in 2.5l containers. Also used in steam irons.

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Halfords or as said supermarkets

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Do you live anywhere near a pet shop selling marine aquaria? They sell RODI water at zero TDS, that’s as pure as it gets give or take

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Thanks! Yeah I can get online but I can’t check the quality easily. Maybe one day when one can go to the shop again without it feeling like preparing for D Day.

@ColinP I REALLY like the RODI water idea. And can get it. I was just checking distilled and demin water not RO water as well!

But then the underlying message het is that something like Tonar QS is quite a no-no. Is that cause it is alcohol based?

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I use alcohol in my fluid, it’s 2/3rds RODI water, 1/3rd isopropyl alcohol (70%) and 1 of drop pure detergent/litre. I’ve been using it for years with no problems. Lot’s of people don’t like using alcohol because it is supposed to damage the vinyl bit it needs to be a lot stronger than this to do any damage, above 60% volume and left for hours do have any affect. It worried me when I first had an RCM so I tested an old record I didn’t want, I submerged it for two days on a tray and tried it, perfect and 100% clean too

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Sorry duff post, didn’t realise you’re not in the UK. Please also consider using a surfactant.

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I can only report as found, I buy APC as recommended by @Richard.Dane for records, but when shielding got in the way of supermarket trips for low dissolved solids water to use in a coffee machine I was recommended to buy a ZeroWater jug. The jug is provided with a TDS meter and if it is even remotely correct our tap water which measures at 260 to 280 is reduced to zero by filtering. You may be able to find these on Amazon.
I have no doubt that given the technicality of RODI process this jug system is not perfect, just out of interest I measured a container of deionised water that I use for mixing wood dye. It measured at 65!

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So after the discussion above and reading further I realised two things:

  1. The Tonar QS fluid is produced here in the Netherlands and therefore it may be unknown to some here.
  2. The mixture of the QS seems to approximate what is mentioned here. Extremely pure demin water, ethanol, and surfactants. So perhaps it could be a good already mixed contender.
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Just broke in the new RCM using the premixed Tonar fluid and the result is very good IMO.

Background super quiet after the clean and sounding really good.

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