Whats on your turntable tonight?

Neil Young - "After the Gold Rush"

Counting Crows - "August and Everything After" 


2016 2-LP Reissue

Reub, you may be familiar with  L'Art du Son, but if not I would certainly recommend you give it a try on your "Spike". I have had nothing but  excellent, and in some cases, amazing results with it. I desperately tried to find a decent Bob Seger "Stranger in Town" and ended up with three bad copies which all "looked" fairly good but I was ready to trash them until I discovered L'Art du Son. One is now an 8.5 out of 10.
Used correctly it may fix your "Spike". 
One thing I firmly believe is that you cannot always clean a 20/30 year old record in five minutes. Like the bugs on the front of your car, left too long, they harden and need to be soaked before you can wash them off. I often soak my records between two sheets of cling wrap for up to an hour to soften that old grime before washing with LArt du Son...maybe worth a try on Spike...
and, on my Michell Orbe tonight I have Boz Scaggs and Sade...both as clean as a whistle...!

Reubent,

just found “After the Gold Rush” last weekend in a barn find. Looked rough, but for $1 I took a chance. I cleaned it up and played it last night. The platter looked VG but played a solid VG+.

@mukiwa - Thank you for your reply. I am considering an upgrade to my record cleaning process and I'll take your comments under advisement.

Regarding my copy of "Spike", it has some visible scratches, etc., so it may never be "good enough". I'm considering sending it back due to "not as advertised/graded". When I received it, it looked pretty good, but it was covered by some type of fibers, like fine carpet fibers. Once I ran it through the Spin-Clean, the defects were visible.

I like the record enough that I just may buy a sealed one since it is not an expensive record at this point.