New Hobby Ultrasonic Record Cleaning


Purchased a cheap $199.00 stainless steel digital ultrasonic cleaner with a very nice record cleaning attachment off Amazon and I am having a blast.

This thing is heated, has a timer and an electric motor to rotate the records in the US tank. It is a 6L unit and it is made in China. Seems well built and it cleans records like a much more expensive machine.

I have cleaned a half dozen albums that are 40 plus years old and have only been cleaned with vacuuming machines and this thing is great. The albums I have cleaned sound darn near new and my wife thought I bought another new cartridge or phono pre-amp.

Can not recommend this type of cleaning system enough.

Rediscover those old albums.. if this thing lasts a couple of years I will be a happy dude. 
128x128skypunk
Rather spend it on my Ducati.

To each their own. $2000 dollars will buy a lot of skydives and a couple of rear tires for my Ducati.

Enjoy.

Listen to the music not your gear.


Skypunk, thanks for the link and review of the ultrasonic cleaner you found. I had just added building an ultrasonic record cleaner to my do list for 2021. Instead, I went ahead a minute ago and purchased the one you provided a link to. Great price and a whole lot less work than building one. I didn’t really want to go out and search for all the parts to make one during this pandemic, but really did want one.

I’ll do a search for some Triton X100 next. Anybody else have a surfacant they use and might recommend? Thanks again.

Mike
I built a DIY ultrasonic cleaner last year and love it as well.  I think the US tank was about $100 and then I used a BBQ rotisserie motor and brackets to turn a spindle and plexiglass pucks as disc separators.

I use Triton X-100 as a detergent and Hepastat 256 as a surfactant, anti-static and anti-fungal (so your solution doesn't start to grow stuff).  Plus some isopropyl alcohol and distilled water from the grocery store. There is a recipe online.  I usually set the heat to 35 but unless I'm doing several batches, it never gets hotter than 32 - no problems.  I do have a separate rinse tank with pure distilled water to wash off the detergent and stuff.  They air-dry just fine but I did buy a little clip-on desk fan to speed it up.  

  It's amazing what it can do for both new and older records.  It's noisy but worth it.  If you decide to try the BBQ rotissery motor, I have a simple trick for getting a round spindle to fit in a square chuck (just took me 5 or 6 attempts to figure it out :-).

If you have the space, I highly recommend it.
Nice thing about this device also is I can clean my collection of watches, the Desmo valves out my Ducati, and my pistols.

all without using solvents.