New Hobby Ultrasonic Record Cleaning


Purchased a cheap $199.00 stainless steel digital ultrasonic cleaner with a very nice record cleaning attachment off Amazon and I am having a blast.

This thing is heated, has a timer and an electric motor to rotate the records in the US tank. It is a 6L unit and it is made in China. Seems well built and it cleans records like a much more expensive machine.

I have cleaned a half dozen albums that are 40 plus years old and have only been cleaned with vacuuming machines and this thing is great. The albums I have cleaned sound darn near new and my wife thought I bought another new cartridge or phono pre-amp.

Can not recommend this type of cleaning system enough.

Rediscover those old albums.. if this thing lasts a couple of years I will be a happy dude. 
128x128skypunk

Very little discussion about Ilford Ilfotol as a surfactant, yet it's what many ultrasonic folks use. Does it also require a final rinse after cleaning, or is a record good to go once it's cleaned and dried?

According to data sheet available on the internet, Ilfotol contains "5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazoline-3-one and 2-methyl-2H-isothiazol-3-one". So this is different from the nonionic detergents like Triton X100 or the Tergitols that have been discussed.  I don't know whether one needs a NID with US cleaning, but assuming it helps, perhaps some chemist among us can enlighten you.  I use a conventional RCM and have been using Triton X100.  I found that after vacuum drying of the wash solution off the surface of the LP, an additional rinse with pure distilled water followed by a second vacuum drying cycle is beneficial to sonics.  This suggests that Triton X100, at least, does leave a residue that is best eliminated.

"5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazoline-3-one and 2-methyl-2H-isothiazol-3-one"

The above is just an anti-microbial agent added for shelf-life.  This free book - Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records-3rd Edition - The Vinyl Press goes into detail on ILFORD ILFOTOL - just search ILFOTOL.  Depending on what version you have, it's a simple diluted nonionic surfactant (with anti-microbial for shelf-life) of about 95% or 97.5% water.   Given that it is mostly water, there are more concentrated nonionic surfactants such as Tergitol 15-S-9 Tergitol 15-S-3 and 15-S-9 Surfactant | TALAS (talasonline.com) that are much cheaper of a known concentration that will perform equal if not better (book addresses).

Should it be rinsed - that all depends on what concentration you use.  If the in-use nonionic surfactant concentration is >0.005% you may need to rinse depending on how sensitive your hearing and how resolving your system.  At >0.01%, you should rinse to avoid audible impact (tends to dampen/smear the high frequencies) and junk on your stylus.  

I actually do a double distilled rinse and vacuum dry as a "just in case"  Only takes a minute.