Gee, I hope your "friend" doesn't read the Audiogon forums...
Seriously, I don't know what that writer was advocating instead, but if a record has fingerprints on it, you are going to need to use some type of cleaner to dissolve them. And a vacuum machine, while not a total necessity, is the best way to get the fluid *and* the contaminants back up off the record. However, I find for the real cleaning portion of the ritual, I prefer to use the Disc (should be "Disk"!) Doctor's hand brushes and scrub the records myself (using plain old - and cheap - 70/30 isopropyl alcohol). I don't think any cleaning machine can do the kind of job on really scummy used records that can be done with elbow grease. For wet scrubbing, I use a long-out-of-production accessory that I found in a thrift shop called a Sound Guard mat, which is basically a flexible molded-vinyl mat that's somewhat bigger than an LP, and has raised, textured support plateaus divided by drainage channels and surrounded by a raised perimeter, with a 'spindle' at the center. This provides a great work surface for hand-brush cleaning, and is something that one of the current crop of vinyl-care accessory makers ought to copy, and in fact improve upon.
Seriously, I don't know what that writer was advocating instead, but if a record has fingerprints on it, you are going to need to use some type of cleaner to dissolve them. And a vacuum machine, while not a total necessity, is the best way to get the fluid *and* the contaminants back up off the record. However, I find for the real cleaning portion of the ritual, I prefer to use the Disc (should be "Disk"!) Doctor's hand brushes and scrub the records myself (using plain old - and cheap - 70/30 isopropyl alcohol). I don't think any cleaning machine can do the kind of job on really scummy used records that can be done with elbow grease. For wet scrubbing, I use a long-out-of-production accessory that I found in a thrift shop called a Sound Guard mat, which is basically a flexible molded-vinyl mat that's somewhat bigger than an LP, and has raised, textured support plateaus divided by drainage channels and surrounded by a raised perimeter, with a 'spindle' at the center. This provides a great work surface for hand-brush cleaning, and is something that one of the current crop of vinyl-care accessory makers ought to copy, and in fact improve upon.