Turntable noobie...what advice do you have?

I did not say clean records are not important. What I said was new records do not need to be cleaned. They only need the incidental dust swept away. Think about it. The stampers are used over and over again. I think it is something like 1000 records per stamper pair. If there was any contamination on the stampers ridges it would seriously screw up at least the high frequency performance of the record if not worse. There is absolutely nothing in the grooves of a new record just some dust on the surface which can be easily swept away. The cleaning industry had to create this myth to get more of us to buy cleaning equipment. Used record buyers would not be enough of a market. Many new records are noisy, bad pressings. The noise is imbedded in the vinyl. You can not clean it away but, this adds to the myth anyway. 

@bdp24 , And you can get a conductive grounded sweep arm that not only discharges your record but sweeps the incidental dust away from the stylus when playing for.... hold your breath.....$30.00. This video is a little goofy and it neglected to mention that the right pivot to spindle distance is 7 inches. It also tracks better if you have  the pivot end 1/4" high. 

As for used records I personally do not buy them. If you do you will need a more aggressive record cleaning device. A "Spin Clean" is effective and inexpensive.

I do not clean new records. I just use the sweep arm. I have thousands of records and a $20,000 record playing device and I do not own a record cleaning machine. People will tell you that there is all sorts of garbage on new record. It all must vaporize when I open the jacket because none of it winds up on my stylus. I can go months between stylus cleanings and I examine my stylus routinely with a USB microscope. All I use is that sweep arm. 

For people who insist on getting into this I suggest saving up and seeding your record collection with 40-50 new records. If you buy just a few records in the beginning you tend to play them over and over until you get bored with them. Then, you go out out and buy a few more repeating the process. What you wind up doing is building a collection of worn records you are tired of. Buy a bunch then add new ones on a monthly basis and you will build a collection of pristine records that remain novel. 

@ddonicht , I usually try to talk people out of getting into vinyl. Then they can't blame me for the mess they get into. Guess I'm too late.

For new records all you need is a conductive sweep arm. It will remove dust from the path of the stylus and discharge any static electricity. I like this one. 

@clearthinker  So, again we think alike. However, there is no such thing as no surface noise. Even a very quiet turntable will pick up some. It does depend on the volumes you listen at and the genre of music. At classical levels the surface noise is barely audible but at Red Hot Chili Peppers volume it is very noticeable between songs. I do not want other rockers to think their system is deficient because they hear surface noise between songs. It is true that some turntables and styluses are better at reducing noise than others. It seems in particular a function of line contact styluses. The Gyger S, Replicant 100 and OLC styluses are very quiet.

@tomic601 , Records always maintain a slight static charge which attracts dust. New records will always have some dust on them. Just pull them out of the sleeve and within seconds some dust will collect. This incidental dust is easy to sweep away as it lies on the surface. What is important from a sonic perspective is contamination in the groove that can not be swept away, it has to be dissolved. You will not see this on your filter. What you see on your filter is undissolvable dust. Sources of contamination in the groove are things like cigarette smoke (tar) and cooking fumes (oil). A record that is contamination will leave a residue on the stylus. I have played thousands of new records and have never seen one leave a residue on the stylus. Because I use a sweep arm dust is kept away from the stylus.

In Short, I disagree in the extreme that new records are contaminated and need to be cleaned. Just sweeping the incidental dust out of the way will do.

I just ordered a Clearaudio Double Matrix Pro to clean a bunch of old 78s I was given. I will do a study on new records. I can record records on the computer and can compare before and after cleaning files to see if there is any improvement in background noise after cleaning new records. I will report on the results probably later in the Summer.  

@tomic601, Dark ages? Perhaps you mean Middle Ages. I have an album of middle age English folk songs. Most people can't listen to it for more than 15 minutes or so but I do find it entertaining as an historical point of reference.

You can continue to perpetrate this mythology of behalf of the record cleaning industry. There are certainly people who take crappy care of their records which will need a good cleaning if you are unfortunate enough to buy one. Perhaps I live in an alternative universe where styluses just do not collect the detritus from groves. I get to save a lot of money to spend on new records!

Nice to hear from you again cleeds. How's the wife and kids?

No, pressing plants are not clean room and as I stated in a earlier post there is always some incidental dust on record and it varies a lot from almost nothing to painfully obvious. But, incidental dust can be brushed away with any good record brush. I use my sweep arm. The only problem with the sweep arm is when you lift it at the end of the record it will leave a little pile of dust in the runout area. I keep an Ortofon carbon brush handy to brush that away. As I have stated a million times there is no other environmental contamination that can be cleaned out of the grooves. Unfortunately, what happens I think is that the stampers become contaminated with dust so that by the end of the run they are stamping dust marks into the vinyl resulting in noisy records, then there is contaminated vinyl. I have tried over the years several times, in different ways including ultrasound to "clean" the noise away and it does not do anything. Since I only play records I purchased new and I use a sweep arm with a dust cover I hardly ever have to clean my stylus which is good because Lyra stylus cleaner is more expensive than gold.

I was just given a load of 78 rpm records so I have purchased a record cleaning machine. After studying the problem for 6 months I have ordered a Clearaudio Double Matrix Pro. Why? It uses fresh fluid for each cleaning and vacuums everything off the record leaving it bone dry and free of any contaminant. Air drying or blow drying are unacceptable. If you let distilled water dry on a flat dark surface you will see a residue. Distilled water is not contaminant free. the Pro cleans both sides at the same time and it is extremely well made. I will use it on a few noisy new records and see what happens. I will record a song to the computer both before and after cleaning to study the results. I have not had this capability before so this will be fun and informative. I hope you will enjoy seeing or hearing the results.  

@bdp24 , The dust bug was not conductive and it did not follow the grooves well. The arm I showed you above has a conductive carbon filament running down it's center. It neutralizes static beautifully. Because it's impedance is very low, a dead short actually, it will instantaneously discharge the entire surface on the record. Static travels over a surface rapidly. It will not turn corners and it will not travel through the record to the other side so you can have almost no static on one side and a huge charge on the other. Another interesting phenomena it the playing surface can have a negative charge and the label a positive one! Vinyl and paper are at opposite ends of the triboelectric series. The vinyl is pulling electrons from the paper which is happy to supply them!   This arm also follows the groove beautifully and given the price it is a no brainer. It's cheap and works way better than a Zerostat which in my opinion and, I have used one extensively, are garbage. They do work but the results are not near as good. I also feel silly using them. People look at you as weirdo. "Look at that guy squirting his records!"  You might as well pull out the wiener and pee on them. No really, the problem is that records pick up static very easily. you have to discharge the record while it is playing as @lewm correctly states above, if records ever have no charge it will only be momentary. 

Why don't you cough up 30 bucks and try one. Then tell us what you think and if you think it s-cks then so be it.