aj, my listening comparisons align with your conclusion that ultrasonic cleaning needs a rinse step followed by a vacuum drying. Folks who are not doing a final ultrapure water rinse and vacuum dry are missing that final step that makes a big difference in results. At this point, my VPI RCM is my final rinse and vacuum dry station to my ultrasonic cleaning regimen.
VPI versus Ultrasonic cleaners
There have been rave reviews concerning ultrasonic record cleaners of all types. But no ones has ever put the records under a microscope. I am posting this because I have at 130x.
I purchased 2 of the same records, 1 ultrasonic cleaned and 1 not. I examined them and the ultrasonic cleaned record while cleaner was not fully clean. I contacted the seller and this was one of the drip dry cleaners.
I gave the ultrasonically record the following light cleaning (which did help it)
1 Docs miracle record misto sprayed and spread with a cotton makeup remover
2 Steam with distilled water
3 Vacuum with my VPI with a Delron tube (much better than the cheap clear one)
4 VPI record cleaner misto sprayed and spread with VPI brush
5 Steam with distilled water
6 Vacuum with my VPI
7 Steam with distilled water
The other record received the above process but repeating steps 1-3 and 6-7. So twice the cleaning
I re-examined them under 130x and showed the results to a couple others who agreed that while clean the double VPI processes looked better.
Listening wise they sounded the same. Listening was done on a SME20/3 with a Sumiko Palos presentation cartridge. Any difference should have been picked up.
Shame I can't quickly post the pictures. But in short if you have a good VPI process perhaps invest in a USB microscope and look at the record before buying another cleaner. If you do get an ultrasonic cleaner I think it needs to be the drying kind.
I purchased 2 of the same records, 1 ultrasonic cleaned and 1 not. I examined them and the ultrasonic cleaned record while cleaner was not fully clean. I contacted the seller and this was one of the drip dry cleaners.
I gave the ultrasonically record the following light cleaning (which did help it)
1 Docs miracle record misto sprayed and spread with a cotton makeup remover
2 Steam with distilled water
3 Vacuum with my VPI with a Delron tube (much better than the cheap clear one)
4 VPI record cleaner misto sprayed and spread with VPI brush
5 Steam with distilled water
6 Vacuum with my VPI
7 Steam with distilled water
The other record received the above process but repeating steps 1-3 and 6-7. So twice the cleaning
I re-examined them under 130x and showed the results to a couple others who agreed that while clean the double VPI processes looked better.
Listening wise they sounded the same. Listening was done on a SME20/3 with a Sumiko Palos presentation cartridge. Any difference should have been picked up.
Shame I can't quickly post the pictures. But in short if you have a good VPI process perhaps invest in a USB microscope and look at the record before buying another cleaner. If you do get an ultrasonic cleaner I think it needs to be the drying kind.
Showing 4 responses by rushton
Whart, nice post. Thank you. I've invested a fair amount of time exploring ultrasonic cleaning over the past several months because I've fallen way too far behind in my record cleaning. With over 6,000 LPs, I needed a faster way to clean than my trusted multi-step manual wet/vac cleaning process. It got the best results I've ever found, but I was not keeping up with my collection and it is just painful to me to play a record that I've not cleaned. I suppose my angst is related to Whart's comments that I'm only a caretaker of the vinyl on my shelves for the time being. In exploring ultrasonic cleaning, my hope was to find that I could do multiple LPs in a single US cleaning cycle and greatly speed up my rate of cleaning records. My goals were FIRST to do no harm. Then see how close I could get to the results of my manual cleaning regimen. I've posted the results of my experiments in bits and pieces on the various threads where I found good advice to add to my experimentations. If you visit the VPI forum thread on cleaning, or the diyAudio thread on diy ultrasonic record cleaning, or the Audio Kharma thread on record cleaning solutions, you'll see my comments. Perhaps I should summarize what I've learned in a new thread here on Audiogon to capture it all in one place. That might speed up someone else's explorations if they are serious about taking cleaning to the best result they can achieve. After 40 years of cleaning vinyl using a variety of methods and fluids, I think that's where I've finally arrived with my new cleaning regimen. My listening partner agrees and I trust her ears more than mine. :-) |
kavakat1: ...an inexpensive source of ultra-pure grade 1 water. It combines reverse osmosis (r/o) with distillation then pouring it into bottle that will not excrete plastic residue into your h2o. The machines available are at Whole Foods.Kavakat, I obtain my RO/DI water from the bulk water dispenser at Whole Foods. The stores in my area use Fresh Pure Waters dispensers and it is very high quality water when drawn from the DI lever (only one lever to turn, not multiple). The DI lever dispenses water that is RO filtered then pushed through an additional DI stack; is is not distilled. Fresh Pure describes its filtering process at their website: http://freshpure.com/your-questions-answered/ The cost at the Whole Foods Market near me is $0.39 per gallon and I believe this is their standard price across all of their locations. |