Record-playing Rituals?

I agree that some sort of manual cleaning, which might include the steam procedure Sean mentions but must include a velvet brush wet scrub, would be in order. I'm a little unclear on this, but since you talk about a 10" side, are these 78's, or another type of record not made of PVC? If they are shellac, I would think the solvents you used in machine cleaning them are probably responsible for any softened condition that might exist at this point. But if they are PVC, or not really softened chemically, then you likely just need to clean them a little more vigoruosly by hand on a flat surface, maybe with a solution that has some detergent component to it. A lot of the surface noise will stay I'm sure, but you should be able to play the records without accumulating gunk on the stylus.

Never came across this thread before, but now that I have, I am sure as I never have been that I am NOT truly an audiophile. Free at last, free at last, thanks to all of you, I'm free at last!

(FLASH! Just as I finished typing the above, my girlfriend walked in the room and asked, "Don't all of you little audio-nerds get worried about each other sometimes?" I love her, I do...)

How can you say such things about me Detlof, when I commonly play my records, after their initial cleaning (if - and this is truly shocking - if I even feel compelled to give them one!), forevermore without once again ever subjecting them to any wet treatment?
Scripted-postum: Perchance yea, forsooth taken.

To be perfectly honest, let me admit something I have never owned up to in public before: In my rig, I have never been able to consistently identify any fluctuation in the sound I could hang my hat on when adjusting VTA or anti-skating. There, I said it! (Not that I ever claimed otherwise.) I feel so much better now. It is true, however, that the last time I futzed around with these settings, I was in a different listening room, with my old amp and phono preamp, my TT resting on a different shelf arrangement, and hadn't yet installed my tonearm damper, so I suppose I should try and belly up to the bar once again. (However, you are inescapably, irrefutably, ascendantly triumphant Detlof, inasmuch as I *have* copped to hearing differences stemming from changes in VTF, loading, clamping, damping, etc., so I do verily protesteth too much ado about nada in my merely music-loving conceits. But I want and need to, every once in a while - otherwise,...??)

Hey, anonymity ought to be at least as good for truth-telling as it is for tale-spinning. :-)