Lots of good info presented already. If you want cheap but more efficient and effective than hand washing and drying; You can purchase a small shop vac (about 30 dollars) and make a very good wet vac. Just take the crevice tool and cut a 1/4 groove along the round edge of the crevice tool. Glue a felt strip along each side of the groove you just cut and partially tape the end of the crevice tool to get the vacuum pulling thru the velvet strip. Walla, you have a very good vacuum. Second, go buy a junk turntable from a thrift shop (got an old kenwood for 10 dollars) and use that to put the record on to clean. It makes a stable platform that you can spin while scrubbing and vacuuming.
you can make your own cleaning solution or buy a cleaning solution. My cheap homemade version is 1 teaspoon of dawn dishwashing detergent, one quart of distilled water and three ounces of isopropyl alcohol. Now you have enough cleaning solution to last a while. Also, the commercial cleaners are very good especially the enzyme based and pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. I use both types depending on the record grunge. Finally the brushes, MOFI, LAST, Walker, etc all make very good microfiber brushes that help get the grunge out of the groove. My regime is to spray or apply the cleaner, Let sit for a few min, then scrub with a brush. Then i vacuum up this mixture and apply a rinse with distilled water. Scrub with a clean brush (i use separate brushes for rinsing) then vacuum again.
For real dirty records, i will insert steaming steps as part of the initial scrubbing step and rinse.
It takes about 5 min per record but you do once and its clean. I have made a great collection by buying thrift shops, flea markets,etc and cleaning. When you take that one special album and clean it well and it sounds like one right off the press, it make it all worthwhile. i also tend to clean while i listen to music so its not too bad though cleaning is a chore. I have a collection up to about 1500-2000 with most coming from sources that needed to be cleaned well.
you can make your own cleaning solution or buy a cleaning solution. My cheap homemade version is 1 teaspoon of dawn dishwashing detergent, one quart of distilled water and three ounces of isopropyl alcohol. Now you have enough cleaning solution to last a while. Also, the commercial cleaners are very good especially the enzyme based and pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. I use both types depending on the record grunge. Finally the brushes, MOFI, LAST, Walker, etc all make very good microfiber brushes that help get the grunge out of the groove. My regime is to spray or apply the cleaner, Let sit for a few min, then scrub with a brush. Then i vacuum up this mixture and apply a rinse with distilled water. Scrub with a clean brush (i use separate brushes for rinsing) then vacuum again.
For real dirty records, i will insert steaming steps as part of the initial scrubbing step and rinse.
It takes about 5 min per record but you do once and its clean. I have made a great collection by buying thrift shops, flea markets,etc and cleaning. When you take that one special album and clean it well and it sounds like one right off the press, it make it all worthwhile. i also tend to clean while i listen to music so its not too bad though cleaning is a chore. I have a collection up to about 1500-2000 with most coming from sources that needed to be cleaned well.