Can anyone who has tried Vinyl-zyme recommend it?

Dan:
I tried the Vinyl-zime on some areas of a few cruddy LP's where some mold had grown, where mildew had gotten through to the vinyl, and when old plastic sleeves had leached onto the record. In all cases, except the plastic, the Vinyl-zime removed a majority of the gunk. In the case of mold and mildew, I could never get ALL of it off no matter what I tried. After using the Vinyl-zime a couple of times I could still see a bit of a patch if tilted in the right light. A pass with Record Research Deep Cleaner removed a bit more, incredibly, but I think, in some cases, nothing will work short of some chemical that would also ruin the LP. Wish I had better news and would welcome such from anyone who does.

I have used a product called "premier" a couple of times on real hard to clean discs. Costs about $20 a can. Seems to do things that RR can't quite get. It's some sort of "safe for the ozone" chemical that evaporates in nanoseconds.

Another alternative to try...

Uhm Well,

Every one says you can't use Isopropyl alcohol due to the possibility of plasticier leaching from the vinyl.

That's true: However, as I am a Chemical Engineer, I doubt the residence time on the vinyl will allow much leaching to occur, and I am so sure of it, I use 50% IPA (99%) purity,
with tergitol's (sufactants, triple distilled water, and 10 drops of (Lysol-yup the stuff your mom used to use) in a gallon of water. Side note(avoid the scents as these are oils added for aesthetics and do nothing for the vinyl except leave a "pine scented residue" .

I have been doing this for some time and have noticed no degredation in the vinyl, however with other formulations (commercial-insert your favorite name) I notice some of the "grunge" is still left behind.

So I believe a few well meaning souls thought about leaching and declared it bad, true enough but I doubt they ever considered what dragging a huge diamond tip, through the groove and digging up the left over gunk does to either the stylus or the groove, just a thought.

I suggest you try my solution only at YOUR OWN RISK, however I find it better than any of the others, and there are a few that use a fungicide to kill the bugs, but, they also don't take care for the other malidies of vinyl.

If your really worried heck add a few drops DOP dioctylteraphtalate to the mixure and re-vitalize the vinyl,
(no I don't suggest this and don't practice this) DOP is an oil and will sit on the surface of the groove and gum things up.

Besides, the plasticizers migrate to the surface of the vinyl on their own, and too much plasticizer will also gum the groove, so too much deep thought by the well meaning is well -- just silly in my opinion.

The nice thing about the monks is the solution that is vacuumed off the vinyl is caught in a jar.

I will run an IR (infrared) on this solution and find out, if any how much plasticizer is removed.

BTW, the water is nasty looking after several months, with junk sitting on the bottom of the jar. So I am certain that there is lots of stuff being pulled off the vinyl.

I have also found with the Monks that with the exception of some really nasty 'garage sale' labels I have picked up that double cleaning rarely does any good.

I do clean with each play, a bigger issue to me is the static dust that gets picked up by the vinyl as the record is played, hmm, glove box for the turn table, transfer the disc via the glove box to the TT.

Nah, now were getting truely anal retentive.

Final note: when I say minimal or no leaching this applies to vacuum cleaned records only, as hand wipes will leave a sheen of liquid on the surface and this may in fact leave spot leaching and spot deposits, which would probably be worse. Puddles of DOP on the surface (from a microscopes view) are not good for sonics.

cheers,

loon

Thanks for the feedback,guys.

Jfrech, do you have a source for the premier stuff? Seems priced comparable to the Bugtussel product so maybe I'll get some of both and give them a try.