Ultrasonic cleaning


How many of you are ultrasonic cleaning your records and what solution are you using? I have a Kirmuss ultrasonic machine and I am currently using Tergikleen solution with distilled water. Have some Audio Intelligence ultrasonic solution on order to try. I can tell a big difference with noisy records lowering the noise floor. 

lnitm

I've had such a good experience with Neil Antin's mixtures to produce a Cleaning Solution, it is more than worthwhile familiarising oneself with this option. 

I also use a generic ultrasonic cleaner from Amazon 

 

I use distilled water and a capfull of Spin Clean Record Washing fluid. 

 

I heat the water to 30C for the cleaning.  

For what it's worth I precede this with a dry cleaning to remove as much dust out of the grooves and I follow it by a traditionally Spin Clean to get anything stuck in the grooves. Overall I can take a filthy antique store record and nearly fully restore the original sound. 

@Initm Photo Flo is a surfactant like Triton X-100 which breaks water's surface tension and allows it to get down deep into the grooves instead of riding nearly on top of them. A few drops go a long way.  In film photography and printing they call them "wetting agents". +1 on your idea of using a vacuum machine for a quicker drying method after ultrasonic cleaning. I'm sure you know already, but for others who don't, the key is not letting it rotate too many times, after it is dry, under the wand such that the record builds up a static charge and attracts dust. 

Kodak Photoflo contains ethylene glycol as well as a nonionic detergent.  EG is probably something you don’t want for cleaning LPs.

I use the Rush Paul method slightly modified:

I've deviated slightly (Triton -X100, 99% isoproful, just RO water in the US tank), but I am thrilled with the results. I got side tracked by Neil Antin and his Precision Cleaning. It's good if you only have a few records to clean, but when you have hundreds regularly you need to do it in volume. I've tried many different techniques, but Rush's technique is the best and cheapest I've found. It's gotten even cheaper as many US tanks come with a record spinner/spit.

 

There have been dozens and dozens of threads written on the subject. Just check any forum. VPI lost theirs but it went over 200 pages. Neil's manual technique is the process de jure. He writes as if he is an expert using US and Vaccum cleaning but he has no direct user knowledge. He can probably clean one record real well while I clean 4-6 just as well.