I didn't know you were so angry, in general.
Synergistic Research pisses me off much more than Lloyd Walker ever could. But SR has staunch supporters.
Is the Walker LP system necessary if one already uses a good RCM?
Before buying my beloved Keith Monks RCM, I asked BetterRecords what they used. I learned that they use the KM RCM followed by the Walker system.
Walker is not expensive but seems like a major hassle.
Currently, it takes me about a minute and a half to well clean a record.
Is the Walker system necessary? Will it make a difference?
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@lewm , look Lew, you darn well know you can find people who still think the earth is flat. What people say or believe in can be wildly inconsistent with reality. I just call a spade a spade and move on. I'm sorry if I am not diplomatic. As far as I am concerned, you are what you sell, nice guy or not. This would make Lloyd a snake oil salesman. I always though he had no part in this but you say otherwise. People like Mark Dohmann, Rob Robinson, AJ Conti , JR Boisclair , Dave Fletcher and Edgar Villchur would never resort to this kind of garbage. These are they guys that push on the limits of audio reproduction and would never resort to this kind of crap. |
I wish I were as certain of most anything as you are of everything, Mijo. Yes, I laugh at demagnetizing LPs, yet there are some who swear it made their LP sound better. And there were claims made that tiny bits of ferrous material do get into the vinyl mix from which LPs are derived. I don't buy it either. What bothered me more about that particular Walker product was the cost. One could go on to debate the efficacy of many other audio tweaks that seem to have no basis in science, but there are other forums for that, if you can stand it. Yes, there was some voodoo in other Walker products also, but they are usually well made at least. What I would balk at is for example the Velocitor "power line enhancer", at $4150 for a six outlet version and which probably contains a few capacitors and/or inductors for isolation. Nothing you couldn't make yourself for no more than $100, but most audiophiles can't or won't DIY. On a positive note, I used their silver contact enhancer on connections that do not heat up, to great advantage, according to my ears. Risky on tube pins that get hot because it hardens in place. Lloyd was not much of an inventor, the Proscenium is a beautified and max'd out version of the Mapleknoll turntables of yore, and the lesser products also are a bit on the me-too side, but he was very clever and a very skilled marketer and salesman. Plus he was a fun guy and very attentive to his customers. |
@lewm , If Lloyd is responsible for the junk Walker Audio sells then my esteem for him has dropped quite a few notches. Overpriced? Maybe. Stupid. Definitely. Since when is PVC magnetic? People, unless you are doing immediate back and forth A-B comparisons you can not make a comment on differences in sound quality. The human brain is not equipped to remember what something sounded like. You can remember what you heard but not what it sounded like. You have to focus on one aspect at a time say background noise level and go back and forth comparing. It takes effort and sometimes special or more equipment to set these comparisons up so nobody does them. Men being men think they are the best listeners and assume they can make these comparisons playing one sample then down the line playing the other an make a meaningful comment. We can not. Not a single one of us can do that unless the differences are glaring. |
@lewm- I'm with you on the rinse step for several reasons, not the least of which is that it gives you another shot at removing the residue. Yeah, I used Lloyd's magnet to "demagnetize" records for a while- it seemed to work, but I got out of the habit of using it (partly because I didn't want that thing anywhere near my cartridge!).
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I knew Lloyd Walker for a few years before his death. He was a very engaging and interesting guy, and I enjoyed my brief encounters with him. But don’t separate Lloyd who made the world class Proscenium turntable from Lloyd who marketed some devices that could be said to have been "gimmicky". Those two guys were one and the same person. First, in his defense, many/most of his seemingly cockamamie ideas actually worked. Others I would summarize in the nicest way possible as "overpriced". I bought one of his enzyme-based kits and tried to compare its efficacy to that of my VPI HW17 RCM. In the VPI, I use distilled water plus 25% lab grade isopropanol plus a few drops of Triton X100 per half gallon. I cleaned opposite sides of one of my favorite jazz vocal LPs that I’ve owned for more than 30 years now, according to the Walker Audio method vs my VPI RCM method. The HW17 squirts the cleaning solution on the surface of the LP, brushes in both directions, and offers vacuum suction of the cleaning solution at the end of a run. After both the Walker procedure, on side A, and the VPI RCM procedure on side B, I rinsed with only distilled water and dried both sides using the vacuum suction of the VPI. I have found the rinse to be necessary to remove residua of the cleaning solution(s), and I can hear the difference if I don’t rinse. Unscientific though this comparison was, I gave a very slight edge to the Walker components over my own RCM concoction. But I also concluded that the Walker method was too time consuming and complex for routine use; the difference was not major. I think I read somewhere that Walker uses enzymes derived from a bacterium, B Subtilis. If so, these are the same enzymes in the laundry cleaner, Shout. I am pretty sure the half-life in powder form would be very long, but I don’t know how long. Shout lasts a very long time on a shelf at room temp, even though the enzymes are in solution. |
Years ago a company came out with pure water based cleaners and was the new kid on the block back then. That company who's name escapes me, is now owned by MoFi. I use their cleaners for years with the enzyme cleaner being the main one on used records. However I bought an inexpensive ultrasonic cleaner last year and have been using it with a minimum amount of simple green cleaner. Follow that with a fan which has a filter over it to blow clean air over the records as they spin above the water. I prefer the US cleaner |
Absolutely not. I have become to believe that the most important aspects of record cleaning are vacuum drying and avoidance of used fluids. How you agitate the fluid either by bidirectional brushing or ultrasound does not seem to make much difference. @whart has most of the bases covered the only problem I see with his system is that the KL Audio reuses it's fluid. It does pass it through a filter which will pick up particulate but it will not remove substances that are dissolved in the fluid. Fortunately vacuum drying removes most of it. The KL Audio by itself is not satisfactory. Any system that uses an evaporative drying method like blow drying is not satisfactory. The water evaporates but most everything else does not. I think the KL is the best of the ultrasonic cleaners and the Keith Monks is a great vacuum dryer but the whole affair takes up more space, is more complicated and takes much longer to clean and vacuum both sides. As for Walker Audio, Lloyd came up with a landmark turntable but the people around him turned the company into a tweak outfit in the worst way. I am sure he is rolling over in his grave. |
It is a great product and yes it takes time especially if buying second hand lp's and doing the whole process. Never exceeded 10-20 lp's both sides cleaning, enzymes have limited life time before dying (some hours), though i am not a chemist to verify that. After that, only the pre mixed solution or/and ultra pure water is fine if required. Transparency, inner detail, focus, are all increased, surface noise is dead silent, no residue, no static build up, and lp's come clean and shiny and stay that way for a long time. More experienced people on the subject may have found better solutions but after tried and used some of them myself i find the Prelude perfect.
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