A Newbie's First Week Impressions -- Vinyl Rules

Hi Maineiac, I suppose for used records, you will have to clean them before playing. I never did get into used stuff, bought all my records new.

I suppose technology and the purchasing power of audiophiles have moved on since the 80s. In those days, you had to go to a shop to get your records "cleaned" by a Keith Monks machine and not actually own a cleaning machine yourself. For what it's worth, the records I purchased new in the late 80s still play like new today and I've never used a cleaning machine and, for many of them, not even a carbon brush.

However I do have a stack of termite eaten records and those have dirt trails all over them. Would a 16.5 be able to bring them back to a functional state providing there isn't any damage to the vinyl itself?

I have a system in place for cleaning vinyl without machines that has served me since the 80s.

Don't clean them.

I'm serious! The more you clean vinyl, the more dirty they get and the more pops and crackles you hear. Most of the records I have (that haven't been eaten up by termites) do not have static nor pop sounds because I've never cleaned them from day one.

What you DO have to do is to use Nagoya 102 anti-static sleeves. Place the new record in the sleeve and don't use the record for 2-3 days. After that, the record's conditioned and there isn't any static anymore. That's it! Each time you play the record following this, let the needle clean the record for you and you just remove whatever the needle collects at the end of each side of playing. Use some liquid cleaner or vibration cleaner for the needle. In my experience, liquids are better.

I've used this technique for years and I don't have problems with dirty or static records. Never had to 'clean' my records with machines nor carbon brushes nor antistatic guns/sprays etc although I understand that by cleaning, you can get deeper into the information as there is a chemical coating on leftover on the record surface during the manufacturing process. However if you get pass this coating, you also will get into the rougher edges of the record groves that was glossed over by the chemical coating thereby increasing noise in addition to the information. I suppose you can't have both the cake and eat it!

One thing to note though, if you use the do-not-clean technique stated above, you have to be careful during the handling of records - no oily hands from food, open record sleeves to bring records out, not slide them out of their sleeves etc etc etc...