"Cleaning" Vinyl Makes It Worse Not Better!

@impaler Apparently you didn’t watch the video and you completely missed my point. Take care.

  And your question about some sort of release agent on records during manufacture, I once had a Ultra one step pressing that had a ring of a grease like substance around the outer grooves.  Touching it made it smear like grease.  MusicDirect was not sure what it was either.

@vitussl101 Yes, I know what you mean.  The little bottle you're talking about is Mofi's Ultra Record Wash concentrate for ultrasonic cleaning machines.  Again, you can make your own for a fraction of the cost.

I have many used lps.  Only clean the real dirty ones.

I use Dawn dishwashing detergent and distilled water in

my Spin Clean brand record cleaner.  Then gently rub and pat dry.

An expensive tonearm will also ameliorate/reduce/change surface noise.

One of the things I really like about my KL Audio ultrasonic machine is that the only "cleaning fluid" it uses is distilled water.  No gunk, no chemicals, no minerals, just clean (and dry!) records.  I also have a VPI 16.5 that I use first if a used record looks really dirty.  I've never had either machine make a record "worse".  

There have been times where I've wondered how much they really do, but a lot of times a record is just pressed badly, or worn and no amount of cleaning will help.  It can be very effective as well.  I remember a time I had my girlfriend over listening to music with me and the record we were listening to was really noisy.  She said "why don't you put that in your cleaning machine" to which I replied, "it's probably just worn out and I doubt that will help", but after a good cleaning it was noticeably better.

@unclewilbur 

...I tried to post a picture here, but it didn't work. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Try this:

1. Write your text.

2. Open a new browser tab and find a Photo already uploaded to the web. If you have an image you want to use it must be stored elsewhere on the web. Flickr and Imgur are two services that allow this, and can be free.

3. Right-click (Windows)/control-click (Mac) on the image

4. A pop-up menu appears
    select ‘copy image address’

5. Go back to your Audiogon post and click in top bar: 6th icon from left:

6. Dialog box appears: paste copied image URL in the box
    No need to do anything else.

7. Click OK

8. Post your response