cleaning liquid for LPs

I have been very satisfied with Disc Doctor cleaning fluids.  Not terrible expensive, but really effective.

DON'T BE FOOLED INTO USING ANY ALCOHOL-BASED CLEANERS.  They can leach out some of the softeners required to help a record recover from use.

I use nitty gritty enzyme cleaners with my machine

I've been using the L'Art du Son fluid.  It's excellent.  After it's gone, I'm going to try the Audio Intelligent #6 one step.

I use Audio Intelligent three step system with Archivist non-alcohol step two. Okki Nokki machine. It rotates both ways which matters. I use step three, pure water, twice. Disc Doctor brushes, three of them. Excellent results. About $90 AI kit would be enough for 250-300 records. Okki Nokki is $499 from the US distributor.

Farzad - Obviously, from the responses, lots of commercial offerings. Not sure if there is any one "proper" cleaning fluid.

For initial cleaning, I use a DIY solution along with steaming and vacuuming. For dirty/flea market records, or if there is a lot of noise even after cleaning with DIY/steam/vacuum, I add the Audio Intelligent enzyme and neutralizer followed by vacuuming.

The DIY solution is 6 parts distilled water and 1 part 98% isopropyl alcohol (NOT rubbing alcohol) with a drop of Dawn dishwashing detergent. Given the relatively low concentration of alcohol (~16.5%), short amount of time the solution is on the vinyl before dilution by the steam condensate and removal by vacuuming - I don’t share bpoletti’s concern. My records don’t get cleaned this way repeatedly...pretty much once and done unless something happens later that requires a re-clean.

After cleaning, put records in a MoFi inner sleeve and return to the jacket. Put a Bags Unlimited plastic outer sleeve over the jacket...open end of the jacket going in first; open end of the plastic outer sleeve at the spine of the record jacket.

More than you asked about but that’s pretty much the full cleaning procedure used. Hope it is helpful.

I use a lab grade detergent from Fisher Scientific: VersaClean. It is specially formulated for plastics, and is ultra-sound compatible. Plus distilled water.

Scientific supply houses have to provide the real goods - audiophile not so much. Hence Fisher. Oh, and new sleeves are a good idea too, as ghost suggests.

I use the formula from the December 1996 Stereophile magazine.  I make it myself and use it everyday, for ten years now. My records are spotless and dead silent.

email me at n@normansizemore.com if you would like a pdf copy sent to you.  

N

I have vinyl from 1980 when I was a teenager that was cleaned once or twice with an alcohol based fluid back then that is immaculate and dead silent still today.

I make my own fluid using this recipe

1. Triple R-O filtered De-ionized water from Whole Foods
2. 99.9% MG chemicals isopropyl alcohol from Amazon
3. Ilfotol wetting agent from B&H Photo in N.Y.

https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/for-audiophiles/home-brew-cleaner-for-vacuum-rcms/

I use it with my VPI 16.5 machine then the record sleeves are replaced with Mobil Fidelity Original Master sleeves.
http://www.mofi.com/product_p/omrs.htm

I use an Audio Technica AT6012X Velvet Vinyl Record Cleaning Brush to lightly remove vinyl surface dust that settles from the room air before each play.