Record Cleaning Machine Fluid

Dougdeacon

My experience is that AIVS went too far. Its rinsability is clearly inferior to RRL's. It left audible residue that took multiple rinse/vac cycles to remove.

When using my VPI, I found that if I have a strong light shining on the record, and I watch the run out area, I can see when all the flud is picked up. It's usually more than the 2 revolutions that VPI suggests.
If you're using a Loricraft I can see how you might have a problem since you only get one pass per cycle.

I have used the AIVS stuff myself along with three of my compadres who have about 6,000 records to clean between the four of us. We keep alot and sell some on E-Bay. Our results were about the same as the Doug Deacons. I guess that makes seven of us then who don't care for the stuff if Paul Frumkin will give audiophile labels to us. I been spinning vinyl for over thiry years and have gone from cheap stuff to a very expensive rig to a sensible priced rig and I can hear the difference between a record that has been left with a bad after taste from cleaning and one that has not. Does that make me an audiophile?

One of my guys read about the whole starting of this fluid on this forum and that record of what was said and claimed and argued does not seem to match closely with what the current distributor posts on that site.

We had been using a home brew that still does a good job but we had some that had mold and greasy finger prints and stuff that we all see. We tried the AVIS enzyme stuff and the record looked clean and pops and ticks were mostly gone, but it sounded like somebody threw a towel over the tweeters and was holding the woofer cone with their finger. It consistently took three or four passes with a VPI 16.5 and flooding it with distilled water before the sound started to clear up. We tried the Bugtussle stuff on advice and it rinses off with no problems. I would not really use either of these things on records unless they could not be saved otherwise and I could not afford a different copy but if I had to I would use the Bugtussle because it is so much easier to use and rinse off. We threw the rest of the AVIS stuff away.

Can cleaning fluids permanently alter the sonic qualities
of vinyl? which ones cause more 'damage' which ones cause
the least 'damage' to a record

Geo_info, Disc Doctor, Audio Intelligent, Walker Audio Prelude... all have consistently good reports from Audiogon members for doing no damage, cleaning well, and leaving no residue after a distilled water rinse. Products like Gruve Glide leave a surface coating, and that is always something that should give one pause.

depends on the formulation, but typical cleaning fluids for vinyl are not harmful. Some strong solvents can actually dissolve or soften vinyl and should never be used. Toluene, benzene etc are examples of solvents i would stay away from. The commercially available cleaning fluids typically are water combined with trace chemicals that have surfactant or dispersant properties and sometimes alcohol to aid in drying. None of these typicaly will hurt vinyl