As the sole member of the "spend more time cleaning than listening to music" backlash, I advise you to purchase your VPI, do a thourough cleaning as recommended by VPI and you'll be listening to the record in approximately 2 minutes. Contrast this with putting on a scuba suit, steaming up the room, worrying about ruining the records and then being too tired to listen when it's all done. And you still really need a vacuum machine to get off all the water and grunge anyway.
Listen - If you want to join that crowd, be my guest. But there is an alternative. I will admit that, on an old, filthy basement, moldy record that you bought for $1 to play on your $30K system, steam will probably do a fantastic job of getting all the crap off. Fair enough. But on a normal record that someone has taken reasonable care of, it's a drudge. At least that's what I think. Best of luck to you and to us all for that matter.
Listen - If you want to join that crowd, be my guest. But there is an alternative. I will admit that, on an old, filthy basement, moldy record that you bought for $1 to play on your $30K system, steam will probably do a fantastic job of getting all the crap off. Fair enough. But on a normal record that someone has taken reasonable care of, it's a drudge. At least that's what I think. Best of luck to you and to us all for that matter.