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Cleaning flood damaged vinyls

My first post here and I was hopeing that someone could help with a perplexing problem. My vinyl collection (~2,000 collected over the past 50 years) was left standing in about 2" of water due to a burst water pipe - all the albums were stacked vertically and now they have a mold/mildew growth on them. My insurance carrier will pay to have them professionally cleaned. Any ideas of who does this? I could sure us the help. I currently clean my albums utilizing a Nitty Gritty with their cleaning fluid and the system that I play them through consists of a Lyra Delos mounted to a Michell Technoarm on a Michell Orbe. Preamp/phono is a Thor Audio TA 2000 connected to Sophia Electric 845 monoblocks. Speakers are older McIntosh XP-25's. CD player/dac is an Ayon Audio CD-2s
aceduck

Showing 1 response by johnnyb53

johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
Polyvinylchloride is very strong and resilient. Your records are definitely recoverable. I lost many of my records to a flood too, but my problem was that well-meaning in-laws stacked the albums horizontally on a mantel that warped the records. That was in 1979.

I saved some that I couldn't bear to dumpster and about 38 years later I found that detergent and a handheld steamer could completely clean the mold out of the grooves.

Unfortunately that is time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially when 2,000 LPs are involved. So you need to hire a professional cleaner. My point is that they can be recovered. Just find a good cleaning service, get the estimate, and make the claim with the insurer.

The record jackets, however, are another issue. :(
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