Will this stuff ruin my records?


I just bought a bottle of “Boundless Record Cleaning Fluid..” I’m suspicious of it for a couple of reasons. #1 it has the odor of clothes cleaning fluid and #2 It’s designed to be rubbed on and off the record with a cloth; I’m using it in a VPI cleaning machine.

Does anyone have experience with this product?
I’ve never used a cleaning solution that smelled before.

128x128rvpiano

FWIW - this is what is in Dawn - CPID (whatsinproducts.com). There are 20 ingredients of which only 4 are doing any cleaning - and they are anionic and nonionic surfactants and alcohol. The product is not naturally thick - other ingredients including salt are added to thicken the product. However, as far as dish detergents go, Dawn is a quality product with 26-45% doing something. Other cheaper dish detergents are nowhere the same concentration or quality.

How you use Dawn is key - what concentration are you using, and because of the other 16 ingredients including the thickeners make rinsing important otherwise you will leave residue, and the product will not rinse easily.

As a better industrial/lab product I always recommend Alconox Liquinox Liquinox_tech_bull.pdf (alconox.com) which is a combination of anionic & nonionic surfactants that is about 50% concentrated and for sink cleaning use 1% (100:1 dilution as delivered) and for vacuum-RCM use 0.5% (200:1 dilution as delivered). Liquinox is not thickened and is formulated for easy rinsing.

Here we go again. Please read Antinn’s discourse on why not to use Dawn or any other commercial dishwashing detergent.

Dawn (or any dishwasher liquid) added to distilled water is your friend! Followed of course by a distilled water rinse. No need to add surfactants! Those are already present in dishwasher liquids. I have safely cleaned over a thousand LP's this way!

If it smells like dry cleaning fluid, dump it !!!

Dry cleaning fluid would likely damage vinyl. Then read the thread on cleaning vinyl properly. In my VPI I use distilled water containing Isopropyl alcohol up to 25% plus a few drops of Triton X100 or Tween20 per liter. Then I rinse w distilled water. 

Never mind.  Thank you.
I just used it, and the record actually was worse than before.

Returning it!

The only way you will know for sure is to try it on a less desirable record.  The better it sounds after cleaning, the better the solution.   I can only think the VPI will improve its performance, not hinder it.