Cleaning records. How often really?
What a cute breed some of you are. Thanks Dawg .... My wife stopped calling me cute a few years ago. I think when I decided I didn't want to work for a boss anymore. You know I kind of miss it. I will take what I can get. I suppose, you never clean your shoes either or maybe once. Since you are asking..... My black shoes hang in the closet. They only get a little dusty. I use a carbon fiber brush on them, If I want them to be really shiny, I put some peanut butter on them and call over Koaltar my running buddy These days my main shoes look like this. They are good for 500 miles. So they get changed out every couple months. There is no need for cleaning. They become walking shoes when their time is up. Inna If anyone has a friend looking to get into vinyl. Show him the picture on that website. If he still decides to get involved, he deserves everything that's coming to him. Inna - I don' think that brush can remove everything. Imagine, as an example, that while playing records you sometimes smoke or cook. You'll get some of that stuff on your records. A friend got me a brush available through ebay in Japan that works on two AA's. Its great at removing lint. You hold it on the record as it spins. It works like a vacuum cleaner. This is for records that have already been cleaned properly and are stored in a proper sleeve. For Daily use. Cooking dramatically changes humidity levels. If you want to stop paying someone else to mix fluids for you I can tell you how to make a solution that can be tailored to the humidity in the room. My email is on my system page link. Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends |
All that desert air would be great for a turntable if it wasn't for all that static electricity from that dry air. It gets pretty dry here on the coldest days in winter. Most homes have natural gas forced air heating, I have found keeping the record in an antistatic sleeve is important. With new/old records I bring in, the paper sleeves are discarded. You can clearly see the particles on the record from these new sleeves on new records when you first pull them out. The records are cleaned but its important to not let them dry out totally from the vacuuming in dry conditions. They are left in the open air for a few minutes and then go into the antistatic sleeves. This seems to work for me. There is no sticking when you pull them out. And its also only on the TT for about 40 minutes. I also would run an extra wire from the bearing sump on the conventional TT's to ground them better. The Verdier which uses magnets for levitation (no thrust bearing) for some reason its not as affected. I don't know why. Maybe someone can better explain the phenomena. For those of you using a regular brush on the record try grounding yourself with your other hand when using it. I was in Arizona about 10 years ago near Phoenix attending a conference. We went to a bar at night. You went through this Western style gate and everything was open - no roof; but were surrounded by these horizontal pipes maybe 1 inch in diameter ? - hanging above our heads. A thin jet mist of cool water was spraying out of the pores in the pipe on us. After a while I realized we could not have stayed there long without the spray. |
11-27-15: Bdp24 Hi Eric, so what does the hard core vinyl guy with thousands of records do in S. California? Build some kind of bubble room ? The houses here have a sealed vapor barrier in front of the insulation going around the entire house including the full basements. This vapor barrier is very similar to the dust cover on your Quad 57's except heavy duty. The windows are double pane with similar insulation values to the walls. I guess one of these would come in handy for some in that type of dusty environment. Cheers Chris |
11-27-15: Nsgarch Hi Nsgarch taken from Premier's website is this wording. Premier But Premiér features a special additive which breaks those 'static' bonds, freeing the dust to float off the LP. This unleashes the 'like new' sound thats trapped in your LPs -- getting rid of the static means you get rid of the dust, along with the snaps and pops and cracks which drive you nuts. So what is the special additive ...By chance is it a well known wetting agent ? This is the battery operated record brush I was referring to in my earlier post that I got from an audio friend. battery record brush - - |
A turntable with a dust cover that can be in place during play is a must, Eric - anyone with a kit setup that is capable of pressurizing their room, even at 75-80 db or above with full scale classical or rock can feel the cover resonating. Those vibes go into the plinth. Well Vinyl is a resonance hobby so maybe this added effect works well for that room, gear, and listener. I have this Technics SL-1200 with cover, that I have been loaning out the last 15 years - mostly to work colleagues for their kids. They keep it a few months, some more than a year. They either get their fix and forget about it, or they like it and buy their own table. It was in fact just returned to me last October. Amazing how much its value has gone up. |
As for the Panasonic record brush -- looks very cool! But it won't remove static from a record because it's not grounded Hi Nsgarch What a cool gift from an audio buddy - don't you think ? I don't have a static problem, so as long as it picks up the lint and does not make any static - I'm ok with that. I may call All-Spec out of curiosity to see is there is a wetting agent in there. Just curious because I use one in the formula I make up. btw - I remember our phone call - four years ago ? 11-29-15: Veroman Do you live in S. California ? 8^0 Glad we can be of help. If you change your mind let me know. I have a Technics sl-1200 that I can lend you ..... |
gpgr4blu Hi Gpgr4blu Jordan of Micro Care told me (by phone/email) that they are the same product except the new one includes Acetone as well. ****************************************************** Me - Hi Jordan. per our call is this the same product. http://www.soundstagedirect.com/accessories-mico-care-premier-cleaner.shtml
He sent me the SDS sheets. If anyone wants them send me an email listed on my virtual system link and I will forward them to you. Cheers |
Yes dust is the common enemy and vinyl that is playing is exposed to it. Dust is made up of yucky things that are floating in the air around us such as dead skin, house-dust-mites, the droppings from house-dust-mites,pollen from flowers and trees,dirt from the roads,fluff from our clothes sheets bedding etc, ash, exhausts of motor vehicles,and small bits of debris which is carried in on the soles of our shoes. The Op Inna further discusses cooking and smoking in his posts . The contaminants from those activities end up on the vinyl, carried there by dust. Another threat to the vinyl - pets. You know Koaltar and I are buds; and as much as I really want to allow him beside me when listening; (he is good at not talking); he is not permitted downstairs where the gear is for two reasons. His shedding. I do find hairs on the stairs leading down. He is also a chewer. Dust in the Wind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ |
Atmasphere - FWIW I also don’t experience a lot in the way of surface noise. The phono equalizer (preamp) can exacerbate surface noise if the preamp is unstable. Vinyl would be no fun with noise. But noise is also relative. One thing for sure, those that are older and had a stash of records before CD came in are more conditioned to deal with the noises issues and fix them to levels acceptable to them. Those younger that only knew digital first - have very little patience. I agree, and believe there are some, re-cleaning, clean records that are noisy not due to the lp’s fault itself entirely, but due to some anomaly that is happening in the way the LP is being played, the signal sent to pre/amp/phono, and on to the amp/speakers. This would be evidenced IMO by a person saying, I think something similar was said on this thread too :^) ; "I cleaned the record over again - my whole routine, and nothing changed". This tells me the cleaning process, or something in the signal chain need to be looked at. My records are quiet. Many rival digital with the lead in, and between grooves. I am running a straight shot of unshielded phono wire. I am confident through my trials with other gear over the years, and in speaking with the person that makes my looms, and his experiences with his other customers; that the isolation afforded by the design of the TT, Tonearm, and the quality of my pre/phono is what allows this to happen. I knew someone who thought his surface noise was made worse by improper grounding, so he tried grounding the TT to his very sturdy house cold water supply pipe. Surface noise multiplied. That experiment didn’t last long. Whart - I’m fastidious in maintaining a ’clean’ room within reason (not a "clean room" in the technical sense) and I find that at best, I am moving the dust around, it is impossible to eliminate. I agree Whart and I am about the same I guess, within reason. I also cannot imagine someone being OCD over dust and being involved with vinyl. I recall someone on the forums mentioning that he was building his own turntable, but that he had this thing (problem) with dust. Didn’t make any sense. I am very sensitive to cleaning around the cartridge, having beheaded an XV1’s cantilever years ago. An isolated incident 20 feet from the TT; but what can happen if you’re not careful.... still makes me shudder a bit. |
