I did something different today with a 1979 LP (new to me). I used AI Enzymatic formula on the Loricraft and then just distilled water in the Degritter. I did this because the record looked dirty (and had a superficial scratch on one side). Came out silent - even the scratch was not audible, though the cleaning can't take credit for that. I'm impressed with the Enzymatic formula and have saved it so far for my dirtiest finds. It really is good, and maybe, if I were feeling flush, I would substitute it for my usual PhotoFlo/ethanol/DW mix in the Loricraft.
The "Very Best Record Cleaning Formulation"
The "Very Best Record Cleaning Formulation"
I am providing this formulation for all who are interested in the very best, and can be proven and demonstrated to be the "Very Best". It can easily be made from available ingredients. On the surface, it appears to be very simple. However, it is based on extensive complex chemistry along with precise mathematical calculations and verifiable data.
You may use it with absolute confidence and be truly assured that it is beyond doubt the "Very Best". You may use it for your personal needs. Or, archival entities may use it for their purposes with confidence. Or, you may choose to start an enterprise that makes and packages quantities as either a "ready-to-use" or a "Semi-concentrated" version for sale and distribution knowing that nothing better exists. You have my blessings and encouragement with one condition. And, that is, that the pricing represents a "fair margin", and, not an obscene gouging, typical for such products.
Initially, I had prepared a presentation that briefly introduced myself, and provided the thought processes, design parameters, and the necessary basics of chemistry, physics, and mathematics to assure you and allow you to be absolutely confident in this formulation. I made a considerable effort to keep it as simple, but, also as thorough enough to achieve this confidence. However, that presentation entailed 5,239 words, typical of such a requirement, however, unacceptable in length by this website forum.
I have no option other than to offer the formulation as a 100% parts by weight version suitable to produce 1 Kilogram of the cleaner, and, invite you to question me about any aspect of the formulation.
Professionally, I am a Chemist, more specifically a Polyurethane Chemist. I have a Doctorate in Chemistry as well as two other Doctorates and a M.B.A.. I held prominent positions in significant corporations before being encouraged to start our (wife and I) manufacturing facility servicing those I previously worked for. We started, owned, and fully operated this business. We eventually obtained 85+% Market Share in our sector in Medical, Automotive, Sporting Goods, and Footwear areas before retirement.
The Audio Industry is extremely technical and many brilliant minds have contributed their talents over the decades in order that we may enjoy music today as we choose. Like many other technical industries, those of lesser minds and values invade the arena with their "magical" inspired revelations and offer their "magical" ingredients and items to all at extremely high prices. They promise that if only we are willing to part with our money - they can provide these items to you that make your audio system sound as if the orchestra, or vocalist, is in your room with you. And, after all, "magical items" must be expensive, otherwise, they would not be "magical".
This disturbs me enormously, and, it is for such reasons, I feel compelled to provide realistic and truthful information that conforms to basic Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematical Principals in those areas with which I am very knowledgeable and familiar.
"Ultimate Record Cleaner Solution"
Ingredient Amount by Weight (Grams)
Distilled Water 779.962
Ethyl Alcohol 220.000
Tergitol 15-S-7 (Dow Chemical) 0.038 (Approx. = 2 Drops)
1,000.000
Important and/or Relevant Criteria
1.) Distilled Water ONLY. Do not use deionized, tap, rain, or spring water. Distilled Water is readily available in most grocery stores. Check labeling to be certain that it is distilled and not deionized. The pricing is comparable.
2.) Ethanol must be purchased at a "Liquor Store" or a "Liquor Control Board" that is suitable for human consumption, and the appropriate taxes must be paid. This assures that the alcohol consists of only Ethyl Alcohol and water. You need to purchase the 95+% version, also known as 180+ Proof. NOTHING ELSE is acceptable. (100% Ethyl Alcohol is not available under "normal" circumstances). Denatured alcohol from a Hardware Store or elsewhere is PROHIBITED, as well as ANY other alcohols.
3.) Tergitol 15-S-7 is made by Dow and is available on the internet in small quantities from Laboratory Supply Houses such as Fisher and Advance, etc.. I have no affiliations with either Dow Chemical, or Fisher, or Advance. You MUST use Tergitol 15-S-7 ONLY. No other Tergitol product is acceptable for this designed formula, and you need to acquire the undiluted form only.
4.) The above cleaner formula will result in a non-foaming (VLF) Surfactant Formulation that exhibits the following:
Surface Tension of 28.5 dynes/centimeter @ 20 C. (68.0 F.)
Surface Tension of 28.2 dynes/centimeter @ 25 C. (77.0 F.)
5.). A Surface Tension of 28.5 dynes/centimeter is Remarkable and will properly clean records of all organic soilings, and all oily substances, as well as very significant amounts of inorganic soilings. This available Surface Tension coupled with the Azeotropic Characteristics of very rapid evaporation and spotless drying occur because of the selection of Ethyl Alcohol and the very specific concentration determined as 22.00% p.b.w., further improves the products abilities. The "Ease-of-Use" and "Spot-Free" results are to be accepted.
6.). Be aware that an "ideal temperature of use" also exists for this formulation. And, that reasonable temperature is 40 C. (104.0 F.). Further increases in temperature offers no improvement, therefore, confirming the proper use of the term "ideal". I mention this not because of of any substantial improvement, but, only to be aware of its’ existence. And, if you have a choice to utilize a room that is warmer than another, select the warmer room closer to 104.0 F. There is no need to elevate the temperature of the records or the materials. Simply be aware that 104.0 F. Is ideal.
If interest is expressed in this submission, I am willing to provide additional submissions regarding other materials, and, other areas of interest. Such as"Best Contact Substance", "Best lubricants for turntables", " Better Dampening Materials" for turntables and tonearms, and, most significantly, "Best" material for "Turntable Platter/Vinyl Record Interface" usually called "Record Mats". The last item will certainly disturb many individuals and anger many suppliers.
Whatever I may contribute is substantiated by Science and Testing, and Verifiable. Science has no Opinions. Opinions in these matters are best reserved for those who rely on their imagination and wishful thinking.
Also, I have no vested interests in this Industry. Simply possess some scientific knowledge that also relates to some aspects of the Audio Area, and I am willing to share that information if requested!
Showing 16 responses by dogberry
The recipe above is 22% of 95% ethanol, which ends up as: 0.95 x 220 = 209ml pure ethanol in 780ml + 11ml (the 5% of Everclear that is water) = 791ml water, which is 26.4% ethanol in the final solution. The only reason not to use a higher volume of standard vodka (ie 40% ethanol, of which you would need 330ml in 670ml distilled water) is if you believe the water in the vodka is of poor quality. I have had no problems (hic!) using Iceberg vodka (which really is made with icebergs!), but then I’m used to dual-effect pharmacology in palliative care. I have seen no evidence that either isopropanol or ethanol interacts negatively in these concentrations with vinyl. Ethanol is theoretically easier to rinse off, but is more expensive. If it didn’t give me an excuse to keep a bottle of vodka in the house I’d use isopropanol. |
There's an awful lot of 'post removed' going on in this thread. I must have missed all the good/bad bits. It is true that vacuum drying is better than air drying as evaporation is going to leave the suspended dirt on the record. Even so, assuming the dirt on the uncleaned record is suspended in a large volume of solution, and only some of that has to evaporate, there will be far less on the record after the cleaning and drying. I'm aware that the best I can do with my machines would be to clean and dry on the Loricraft, then clean and dry in the Degritter, then finish with a distilled water rinse and dry in the Loricraft. The only problem with that is that I'd rather listen to music than clean records, and the first two steps without the third is good enough for what is left of my remaining ear.
|
Actually, @lewm , in the UK surgical specialists are ’Mister’ in a nod to their barber-surgeon past, but non-surgical physicians are called ’Doctor.’ Now the funny thing is this, they get called doctor only by courtesy, as the three forms of medical qualification there are not doctoral degrees. Most commonly a university awards a bachelor of medicine and a bachelor of surgery degree (M.B.,B.S. in London, M.B.,B.Chir. from Oxford or Cambridge, and M.B.,Ch.B. from anywhere else), or there was the ’Conjoint exam’ from the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons, giving you the qualification LRCP,MRCS, and most anciently and now gone, the qualification from the Society of Apothecaries, LMSSA. Those three are in descending order of worth, the certificates that came with them grew as the degree was easier to achieve!) Having said that, in the UK there is a medical equivalent of a PhD, called an MD, which causes lots of grief for a well-qualified UK physician who turns up here in Canada and discovers everyone has an MD! |
Wizzzard, please read my post again. No physician in the UK is technically a doctor, unless he or she has done an MD. Yet all are called 'doctor' as a courtesy (it refers to their post rather than a qualification). Once a would be surgeon, or obstetrician, has passed his or her FRCS, or FRCOG, they are delighted to revert to 'Mister' or 'Miss' and that is a little bit of inverse snobbery from the days when barber-surgeons were looked down upon by physicians. Oxford and Cambridge came relatively late to medical training. Students now graduate with a BA as well as bachelor's degrees in medicine and surgery (by the way, the "Ch. is not latin, but French "chirurgerie"). In my day most students did their pre-clinical years in their Oxford college, but came to London for their clinical years, most to UCH, and some to KCH. A few stayed on at The Radcliffe or Addenbrookes, and the proportion who stay there has risen as those hospitals have found their feet. At that time, a London medical qualification was the most highly regarded, and many schools elsewhere tried hard to raise their standards by asking for higher entry standards (eg I got four offers, three As from Bristol, and three Cs from UCH, KCH and Middlesex. I got my three As, but chose to accept the UCL/UCH offer). Anyway, this has gone tediously off-topic and I agree that you may close this highly policed thread. |
Absolutely right, @lewm, but combined with:
it is obvious to all that alcohol (of any chain length) isn't much good as a wetting agent. At the end of the day, we have one person's opinion about the percentage of a certain alcohol and a certain wetting agent making the "best" cleaning solution in distilled water. Almost everyone who cleans their records uses distilled water with a detergent and some alcohol added. That's news to no one. To claim some massive benefit from using ethanol rather than isopropanol, or Tergitol over any other detergent should take some evidence. My experience says that pure DW in an ultrasonic machine is pretty good, but I go quite a long way beyond that for theoretical benefit even though I'm not sure I can hear the advantage. The OP needs to show why his solution is better than any other, and that is not something we have any hint of as yet. To be fair to him, one would need double blind cleaning and a significant number of listeners (and even then, can we say the disks were all equally dirty?) Plainly, we are in the territory of opinion, and I'm happy to listen to opinions. I just don't take them as gospel. |
In the UK the saying is that 'there are many ways to kill a cat.' I find that the cat gets skinned when the same sentiment is expressed here in north America (superficially that sounds kinder, but one hopes the cat was killed prior to skinning.😕) The point is that one can clean a record in many ways, although maybe one is the very best (from a certain point of view: speed, expense, effort, and of course, results). As well as consideration of the solvent/detergent solution used, there are mechanical factors to consider. Hand vs. machine brushing, and with which kind of brush? Or ultrasonic agitation? Or a combination of two of those, or even all three? I see people saying ultrasonic cleaning is a fad, and I think to myself, you haven't tried it yet. Surely, thorough mechanical cleaning, by hand or machine, can be very good. Accepting that, why dismiss the possibility that ultrasonic cleaning offers nothing beyond a fashion? I've been playing vinyl a long time, and discovered early that cleaning records was a huge (and cheap) upgrade. Hand washing, vacuum machines, point-source vacuum machines and ultrasonic all tried. They all work, and some better than others. I've settled on the point-source Loricraft followed by a Degritter. This results in nearly all records coming out silent, save for any with a scratch. I have experimented with solutions, and have settled on a homebrew mix of distilled water, ethanol and either PhotoFlo or L'Art du Son as the detergent in the Loricraft. I can't really say I can hear a difference when the Degritter fluid is used or pure distilled water in the second stage, but remember that comes after the Loricraft so most of the crud is already gone. Either way, the fraction of silent records is higher with the ultrasonic following the mechanical cleaning. Once everything has been cleaned, I expect (supposition: unproven) that the Degritter alone will refresh them to as quiet as they can be. I have not yet got to the point where I think any disk needs re-cleaning. I read of many people deciding that ultrasonic alone is as good as they need, but given how good the Loricraft alone is, I see it as useful even if just to keep the greater part of the dirt out of the Degritter tank, which gets re-used for several records. It also makes an easy way for me to do a DW rinse and dry if I have used Degritter fluid in that machine. I guess my only message here is that one should not dismiss ultrasonic cleaning as a fad. It does add something to even the best vacuum machines, and many say it does a creditable job alone. Is there any theoretical reason why this should not be so? The cavitation bubbles, for example, from a 120KHz transducer are far smaller than the tips of any exotic record cleaning brush. |
This is off-topic and I apologise. The post that I reply to has been removed but was intemperate and insulting. I agree that "chirurgerie" is an archaism, and that most modern results for a search on the meaning of B.Ch. will show "chirurgie," but I stand by my statement that "chirurgerie" is the word contracted into that B.Ch. Let me give some examples that pre-date google: https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ex_libris_2.pdf https://archive.org/details/b30321220 https://archive.org/details/b30330750 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A05049.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext Now let us discuss vinyl and stop being distracted. |
My experience with the Loricraft, when compared to the VPI 16.5, is that it does a better job of drying the record, and presumably removing dissolved cleaning chemicals. While I am currently experimenting with pure DW in a Degritter afterwards, I am not noticing any tendency to foaming, even towards the end of twenty records, at which time I change the water. |