What do you think about record cleaners?

Well look on the bright side, then you won’t care about buying a record cleaning machine or not anymore :man_shrugging:

The salts are deposited, as soon as the water hits the surface of the vinyl. The etched vinyl wicks it down into the grooves. The grooves are not nicely polished lines. I played around a lot with this 25 years ago with distilled water and 4 stage RO water. I found even just using these two types of water, any surface contaminant is taken into the groove causing noise.

I’m sure NASA could develope something to clean vinyl records non-destructively, but until then, I’ll leave it for the stylus to knock a few bits out of the way.

Yes you will end up with something on the surface and if you use clean solvents all the way through the result will of course be better.

But if the salts are in solution, in a non saturated solution, the vinyl groove wont cause it all to deposit. Yes water may be pulled into small fissures and there it will not easily be replaced with the new solution (the chance that the brownian motion of the particles will intersect with where the old water is occluded) but to get it to crystallize you will need to reduce the solvent (water which is pretty polar and salts love being solution in water) or lower the temperature (which could happen on a cold record surface).

I mean if you dissolve a little table salt in water leave it it does not suddenly come out of solution. You can pour your energy drink into as a rough a container you want you won’t see crystals growing.

The results you mention is cause we do not live in a hermitically sealed world. Even record cleaning solutions will contain some impurities. The key is the concentration thereof and if it is enough to actually make a difference.

I use a Keith Monks Prodigy, simple, quick, quiet - once I’ve cleaned all of my records I will move it on.

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That’s how I sum up the whole record cleaning discussion. IME I have found putting any liquid on the record surface made a noticeable difference by adding noise rather than reducing it. The only exception would be a local cleaning on a spot where something of visible size causes a big problem. This could possibly be made acceptable using distilled water, but at the end of the day, I’d probably just source another copy.

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Where I live tap water is definitely mineralized and chlorinated, and it’s a really bad idea using it for record cleaning, because that can leave mineral deposits that harden and become impossible to remove again. I have records I bought used. They look pristine but play like hell, quite likely from improper cleaning including use of tap water.

As for noise of record cleaners, that’s largely irrelevant in my case. My Audio Desk is noisy, but I have a cleaning station in my home office, so I can clean records and shut the door while I enjoy music in the listening room down the hall. In addition I don’t have to make space for any of it in my listening room, including supplies (distilled water, stacks of inner and outer sleeves, etc).

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I have the same machine as you and the same approach, but both are luxuries. If the old LP12 goes to Tasmania, I can’t see myself paying what that RCM now costs all over again, so a discussion of which more ‘affordable’ RCM works best is highly relevant.

My current RCM is in Wimbledon. Don’t put London tap water anywhere near your vinyl unless you are looking for that authentic ‘been through 5 church fetes and 3 Dansettes’ or ‘pressed on Ryvita’ sound.

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Been cleaning some old Soul 45s…

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