Di I really need to clean my LP's?

mc, no offense but if you don't understand the various reasons for record cleaning and need to ask then possibly you are one of those who dosen't need to bother.

However even a simple search for record cleaning will turn up hundreds of positive results.  And those with a wide variety of cleaning methods.

What really surprised me was an Audio Note system demo many years ago to our audio club.  The AN rep included vinyl playback in his demo and commented that all one needed to do to clean a record was to play it.  His contention was that the stylus tracing the groove would clear away any dust, grime, or deposits on the vinyl.  I've never known anyone who is half-serious about playing LPs that believes that.  In fact playing records without cleaning can imbed the contaminants and make them sound worse.

In my research before posting this question, results (many from record cleaner manufacturers) contain many assertions without any real facts. 

ilikemiles: How do you know that the mold release compound residue leads to contamination? 

pryso: How do you know that playing a record with contaminants will make the records worse?

I have also been advised that cleaning records often makes them worse, so I want to proceed based on some real evidence.

I just checked my similar query on another forum, where one member suggested the following publication, which I shall review this evening:

https://thevinylpress.com/app/uploads/2022/01/PACVR_3rd-Ed_2022-01-17_Master.pdf

  " How do you know ...."

i know from experience. A clean record sounds better and plays quieter, no one will convince me otherwise.

I have experienced the stylus breaking off - from my very costly cartridge - maybe due to too poor cleaning. I don’t want a repeat.

So what do I do?

I mainly have a dry cleaning regime. If the record seems dirty, it goes into a manual wash. All records go through a dry cleaning before I play them, mainly with a Mofi brush. This brush goes lower into the grooves than the others I have tried - so if there is pollution or problems, my player slows down, if I press the brush down.

This is obviously not the full story, but it works - so far - no more stylus loss or goodbye to my cartridge diamond.

I wonder about the advice to clean new LPs anyway. If there is some residue that needs to be cleaned, before the stylus gets into the groove?

My impression is, these "new artifacts" when you buy a new LP are mainly gone, when you play this LP the second or third time. The stylus acts as a cleaner. But this may be a bad way to do it...