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Best Record Cleaning Fluid

Greetings All,

I’ve spend the last few days searching and reading about record cleaning fluids for my cleaning machine (Okki Nikki).  Wow - there are a lot of options out there.  Many more than I originally thought.  Some real esoteric stuff that costs a pretty penny.  I’m currently going through my entire collection, cleaning it, listening to it and adding it to a Discogs DB.  Want to finally know how many I have and have a list of them.  But doing this has resulted in me going through cleaning fluid rather quickly.

So many options, so many perspectives on what are the best fluids.  What do you all say.  I understand that alcohol is a no-no for fluids, but I can’t find out if some of them include alcohol or not.  Currently using up the fluid that came with the machine, but no where can I read it if has bad ingredients.

The 2-stage or 3-stage cleaning systems are not going to happen.  I did get a bottle of Revolv that I was told was good, and use if for new high quality pressings (as opposed to those I bought in high school).

Anyway, would appreciate some perspectives on good quality record cleaning fluids that don’t bust the bank.  Thanks for keeping the sarcasm in check.

Happy Listening,

pgaulke60
ljgerens
155 posts
 
I no longer play LPs, but when I did I used clean room gloves to handle my LPs. The worst thing to try to remove from an LP surface are the 
proteins, amino acids, lipids and salts from your skin contact. If you handle your LPs carefully with no skin contact than the best cleaning method that I found was deionized/distilled water and an ultrasonic bath. If your LPs  have some fingerprints, Isopropyl alcohol can be used to clean them first followed by an ultrasonic bath in deionized/distilled water. 

As someone said earlier, all cleaning agents used on LPs leave a residue. It may not be visible to the naked eye but it is there. You want to try to minimize that residue. 

I mention deionized/distilled water as I found it to leave less residue than plain distilled water. For most people plain distilled water is fine.
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rjamilla
23 posts
 
I've been using L'Art Du Son for a while now. I'm on my 2nd bottle and a bottle lasts a while as it's concentrate you mix with distilled water. Before that I mostly used DIY alcohol based solutions. On my Okki Nokki, I have to spin 3 revolutions with now to vacuum when I only used 2 for DIY solution. The other issue I've noticed with L'Art Du Son is that the velvet pads on the arm don't seem to dry off as fast. With alcohol based solutions, the pads were dry after each record. With L'Art Du Son there seems to be a cumulative effect. If I clean about 5 records, the pads stay wet during the vacuuming process. Before that I don't really have a problem. What happens is the wet pads just push the fluid over the surface of the record instead of being sucked into the tube. It's not a deal breaker for me, but, it is an annoyance that I've come to accept.
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cleeds
5,947 posts
 
ljgerens
... I used clean room gloves to handle my LPs. The worst thing to try to remove from an LP surface are the proteins, amino acids, lipids and salts from your skin contact.
That seems rather like overkill. It's possible to handle an LP without ever touching the playing surface by simply touching only the LP edge and the label.
... the best cleaning method that I found was deionized/distilled water and an ultrasonic bath.
Same here.
ljgerens
155 posts
 
It is not overkill. Even if you handle the edges, oils from your fingers migrate onto the outer edge of the playing surface of the LP. I always had boxes of clean room gloves in my lab so they were readily available. 
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