CLEANING VINYL - The AK compendium of fact, fiction and collective wisdom

Have you ever used glue to clean a record?

  • Yes

    Votes: 231 19.9%
  • No

    Votes: 927 80.1%

  • Total voters
    1,158
i have used w d 40 ,not bad,and mostly windex an paper towels , pretty good.theres many places within 30 miles or so that sell many albums,some still in plastic etc,perfect new from back when musick didnt suck as bad..........
 
Please excuse me if this has been asked and answered, I didn't feel like searching 18 pages. There was a thread I had run across with "you're doing it wrong" in the title. Anyone have a link to that one? I remember it containing a bunch of good, scientific info on cleaning methods and solutions.
 
i have used w d 40 ,not bad,and mostly windex an paper towels , pretty good.theres many places within 30 miles or so that sell many albums,some still in plastic etc,perfect new from back when musick didnt suck as bad..........


WD-40 on vinyl records?

:eek2:



:whip:
 
Sometimes the statement "cleaning records" gets convoluted. I have no intention of hanging any of my LP's on the wall and really don't care how they look and I am not talking about the LP covers. What I do care about is how to get the best sound out of the vinyl considering age, dirt etc. I remember sitting around with my buddies dropping the needle over and over again on a Neil Young record to figure out chords. I would not want that in my collection or there is no record cleaning process on earth that could resurrect that LP to a enjoyable quality but it looked good. What I have been desperately seeking is a way to clean 40+ years of dirt from an LP to minimize the pops and cracks. I will never use wood glue and the like on any of my LP's. One must really think about this in a logical manor and with a basic understanding how records play/cut. Although there are many methods advertised and suggested the only one to me that makes sense is ultrasound. It is the most non-invasive approach however I have a few questions about it. #1. Do the labels get wet and #2. Can anyone offer an unbiased before and after playing of a few LP's. I see many demonstrations that show how pretty LP's look afterwards (which the earlier referred to Neil Young record might look shinny) which loops back to the question- How do they sound after- as opposed to before cleaning? Has anyone used an Ultrasonic device that actually helps delete the pops and cracks?
I got back into vinyl a year ago....started with alcohol and distilled water as many recommend. However had about 350 old records piled in 120 degree Florida garage for 30 years.With the humidity, there was too much gunk in the grooves for spot cleaning. There is no way ultrasound will remove that in a dry process. They had actual grit in the grooves as well. Ended up with dish pan with a few drops of Palmolive detergent. I dunked vertically and scrubbed with finger tips as I rotated, then dried with soft non shedding cotton hand towels.I did not damage or fade a single label. Dish detergents have a rinse type agent in them and most are shiny like new. Obviously this will not correct problems with damage to the vinyl itself. Try a couple of losers and see what you think
 
Guilty as well. As a kid of the 70's. Dawn and dishwater! Dry with Bounty towels! Allow to air dry 15 minutes. Play. Way better than what you started with. No matter the condition of the record. Just follow the grooves both back and forth.

But I NEVER used my fingers. I always use a Scotch Brand sponge. I soak the Scotch sponge into Dawn Dish Detergent - - - which saves animals lives, if you didn't know...

For a pristine LP, that is "cleaned" before each play... with a sticky roller or static free brush, these are far more effective than the Dawn and Dishwater method.

Use some discretion. A friend's LP, a Goodwill pick, a yard sale find, or your own original purchase would dictate how to care for it. Yet I will never understand the "higher quality" water.
 
Last edited:
#1. Do the labels get wet?

While I cannot speak for other's products, these were designed to eliminate any label wetting. The dual o-rings are for demo purposes only, as one size fits 12" label size, and the other works for 10" and 7" records. The aluminum insert pictured, fits large hole 7" 45's. I know other folks here have the vinyl stack products so maybe they will chime in about those systems too.

I've cleaned several thousand records with my machine and I can say this, it will NOT fix damaged records, but it will clean them better than anything else I've used. It does make an improvement.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20161116_183852.jpg
    IMG_20161116_183852.jpg
    67 KB · Views: 22
Dr Vince's thread was linked earlier in THIS one, ya'll. Just a heads up, this is a gathering of ALL knowledge, so please.....link away to stuff from here, and elsewhere, if it seems valid to the topic.

As for those saying "I'll NEVER glue a record." I would advise to never say never. For that gone-ass record with nothing to lose.....why not?? I've had fantastic success with resurrecting otherwise useless records, and THAT is what glue should be used for.

Carry on. Glad to see this thread get a little traction, because cleaning vinyl properly and safely is a goal of each of it, is it not??
 
IMG_20161122_192655.jpg

Ultrasonic is not a dry process. There is a very in depth thread that deals with the various chemistries involved with vinyl formulation and the cleaners used for cleaning vinyl records. There are also quite a few hands on contributors that have added their findings. It's well worth the read.
 
Sometimes the statement "cleaning records" gets convoluted. I have no intention of hanging any of my LP's on the wall and really don't care how they look and I am not talking about the LP covers. What I do care about is how to get the best sound out of the vinyl considering age, dirt etc. I remember sitting around with my buddies dropping the needle over and over again on a Neil Young record to figure out chords. I would not want that in my collection or there is no record cleaning process on earth that could resurrect that LP to a enjoyable quality but it looked good. What I have been desperately seeking is a way to clean 40+ years of dirt from an LP to minimize the pops and cracks. I will never use wood glue and the like on any of my LP's. One must really think about this in a logical manor and with a basic understanding how records play/cut. Although there are many methods advertised and suggested the only one to me that makes sense is ultrasound. It is the most non-invasive approach however I have a few questions about it. #1. Do the labels get wet and #2. Can anyone offer an unbiased before and after playing of a few LP's. I see many demonstrations that show how pretty LP's look afterwards (which the earlier referred to Neil Young record might look shinny) which loops back to the question- How do they sound after- as opposed to before cleaning? Has anyone used an Ultrasonic device that actually helps delete the pops and cracks?

#1 - no the labels do not get wet. I use the Cleaner Vinyl system which does not cover the labels and they still do not get wet. #2 - I have a couple of albums that were unlistenable prior to ultrasonic cleaning. Both were cleaned several times with everything including glue, scrubbing bubbles, and my RCM (record doctor V) - and they improved a bit but were still basically unlistenable. The two albums were a copy of Willie Nelson's Stardust that I picked up used and a 180 gram copy of Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue that I had played way too many times using only a carbon fiber brush to clean between plays. After ultrasonic cleaning - both are now quite good - not perfect as cleaning can't fix damage, but both are reasonably quiet and the number of pops and clicks decreased by roughly 10 fold - definitely listenable now.
What I find most interesting about US cleaning is that already good albums get much quieter as the background noise drops noticeably after US cleaning. This is especially noticeable with Classical Music LP's that tend to suffer a bit from surface noise during quiet passages. I have some Telarc's, Sheffields and RR's that I've owned for 30+ years and I've been impressed with how well the US cleaning process restored the pristine nature of the surfaces of most of them.
 
- I have a couple of albums that were unlistenable prior to ultrasonic cleaning. Both were cleaned several times with everything including glue, scrubbing bubbles, and my RCM (record doctor V) - and they improved a bit but were still basically unlistenable. The two albums were a copy of Willie Nelson's Stardust that I picked up used and a 180 gram copy of Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue that I had played way too many times using only a carbon fiber brush to clean between plays. After ultrasonic cleaning - both are now quite good - not perfect as cleaning can't fix damage, but both are reasonably quiet and the number of pops and clicks decreased by roughly 10 fold - definitely listenable now.
.

Okay, here it is - proof that even the GLUE method doesn't clean as thoroughly as US. I been waiting for something like this. I cannot imagine any contaminants surviving the glue method, but this is encouraging.

Also, I never pass up a nice copy of "Stardust". Classic.
 
Okay, here it is - proof that even the GLUE method doesn't clean as thoroughly as US. I been waiting for something like this. I cannot imagine any contaminants surviving the glue method, but this is encouraging.

Also, I never pass up a nice copy of "Stardust". Classic.
In cleaning as many records as I have the only hard rule I've reached is that different contaminants react better to different treatments. (Well, that and the Spin Clean is very over rated.)
 
Back
Top Bottom