Vinyl Care

Welcome to the madness! 

Record cleaning is almost a religion onto it's self. You will learn fast, that records are the cheapest part of this hobby. 

Keeping the needle clean is the most important thing. Nothing sounds worse then a dirty needle. Also it's very easy to destroy a needle cleaning it. Done it twice already myself. Generally, you get a brush, pull the brush towards you from the back of the turntable. Or you can get a little ultrasonic needle cleaner, or the sticky goo cleaners. Picked up a ultrasonic myself, it works wonderfull! Just needs a bit of distilled water. Use the same source as my ultrasonic record cleaner.

On to records. Usually, first you dry brush all the surface stuff off. Then do a wet clean, or dump into a ultrasonic/vacuum cleaner. For used records, they get dry brushed, then a manual wet wash, then go into the ultrasonic. After that get put into nice new clean rice paper sleeves. 

Chemicals for me I use all Groovewasher stuff. I trust it, not overly expensive. In my ultrasonic cleaner, I use like 6 drops of US cleaner per gallon of distilled water. 

Usually clean records in batches, it takes over my kitchen with brush, wet clean, UC clean, re-sleeve. Usually do around 6-8 records per hour. 

On my setup, there are no pops, hisses, static, very dark background. When they do start to make any noise, they get cleaned again in the US. 

@mswale said, "Record cleaning is almost a religion onto it’s self."

I’ll never make cleaning records a hobby!

@twangy57 

If you don't want to wait until you can get a VPI, you might consider a Nitty Gritty or Record Doctor vacuum record cleaner.  My Nitty Gritty 1.0 still works like new after over 30 years.  It does take 3 manual turns to remove all the cleaner.  I'm currently using MoFi liquid cleaners, but I've never been convinced that one cleaner is better than another.  But perhaps the MoFi have an edge in that they leave less residue.  You can test this by placing a drop of cleaner on a horizontal mirror and see how much residue is left after it evaporates.

I use a Zerostat anti-static gun and then an Oracle carbon-fiber brush to clean each record before play.  (The Oracle may be unobtainium, but many use a Hunt Decca carbon-fiber brush or other brands.) It's also helpful if you use rice-paper sleeves to lower static charge on the record. Whatever sleeve you use, if you cut open two sides so it can be opened like a book, that will also reduce static.  I use LAST preservative on my LPs, and I think this also reduces the static charge on some.  (Static charge increases dust adherence to the vinyl, so it's very important to reduce it, especially if the humidity is low in your listening room.)  Many of my records play so quietly, you'd be hard pressed to tell they're vinyl.  Unfortunately, a lot of US '70s vinyl was of inferior quality, so they may never be that quiet.

The good thing about many rock LPs is that the music is so uniformly loud, that surface noise is less audible during the music.

I use a vinyl vac (wand attachment for a vacuum cleaner) and a lazy susan after i wet clean with Audio Intelligent Premium One Step.  all in like $80.

mswale

Wow,that's a lot of steps.

I will only be doing the few albums I still listen too.

I do want to take care of my stylus and cartridge though.

Is there a place I can get all theses supply's?

I want to start with the brush and stylus cleaner.

Thanks