Ultrasonic record cleaners

drbond, You have a point about the fact that I do my cleaning in a conventional VPI RCM. And I guess I take the point of antinn that using 25% IP alcohol in a heated US cleaning tank might be dangerous, although that surprises me. However, the fact remains that such a low concentration of isopropyl alcohol as you propose is unlikely to help much, in my opinion. By the way, because of the low concentration of Photoflo as you propose to use it, I have to think that I was being overcautious in mentioning the undesireable additive, which antinn names as propylene glycol. However, antinn seems to agree that other surfactants might work better, e.g., Tergitol. Sorry for any confusion, otherwise.

@antinn 

Thanks for the word of caution about Photo Flo.  Do you know if the solvent in Photo Flo could adversely affect the LP at all?  

One of the best reasons to purchase a degitter is that it has a filter that cleans the water every cleaning cycle. Most other cleaners once you clean the first record the dirty water is returned to the water tank

@drbond,

The 'solvent' in Kodak Photo-Flo as I addressed is propylene glycol - and it is not harmful to a record; and it is non-toxic in many cosmetic products.  

So, with my new, updated ultrasonic LP cleaning process, I do notice a significant improvement in sound quality. The updated process has made my slightly noisy LP’s (static, pops, etc) almost silent, with only an occasional static pop noted. The LP’s that I formerly couldn’t even listen to because of the surface noise (mostly static-type noise) are now very listenable; although there is still noticeable surface noise, it is greatly diminished (I would roughly estimate a 75% drop in surface noise). Overall, it’s quite an improvement, and I’m beginning to wonder if longer, and a few more cleaning cycles may even clean up those troublesome LP’s that were formerly unlistenable. . .

Thanks to everyone for their input, and thanks to @antinn for sharing his knowledge. I don’t suppose that there’s a hard copy of your book available for purchase? (I generally don’t like clicking on links to "download" items because of virus and malware risks.)