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 oilmanmojo

I have purchased 3 lots of vinyl that were flood damaged. The bad issue is the covers will be pretty much screwed. But the good news is the vinyl can be cleaned. I have used very successfully 3 step process. First, get some bleach and dilute 50%. Use a separate brush for the bleach solution. step one, put bleach solution on the record and spread to cover all of the grooves. let stand for 3-5 min. Then using the same brush, scrub the side. Vacuum off bleach solution. second step- use your normal cleaning solution and brush you use for it and follow your normal regime. Third step, rinse with distilled water.

If you are a steamer (some do and some dont), it works well with the bleach step.

I now use an ultrasonic bath, but have not brought any recent moldy records but i am sure the bleach would work with it also. The bleach will kill the mold on the record and will not hurt the vinyl if you follow your normal cleaning regime and rinse well. I have about 350 records that i recovered this way. Final warning, Throw away the old liner and use a new liner for the record. This is a lot of work, but it will recover them with this method