A post about cleaning records

[Entrigo]

Last night I was listening to a record I had just bought - as Near Mint - which turned out quite noisy.

Then I noticed the stylus was picking up a lot of fluff, even though I'd cleaned it - as it looked shiny and clean, I only did a quick hand wipe using GrooveWasher, then spun it on a 5 minutes wash/dry cycle in the Hummingguru ultrasonic cleaner.

But the fluff pointed clearly to some caked dirt... So I decided to do a deeper clean: MoFi Enzyme Cleaner (5 minutes per side then wipe), then GrooveWasher G2 (5 minutes per side then brush/wipe) then 2 full wash cycles plus a wash and dry cycle in the HG.

The record still has occasional tick and very light surface noise, but much reduced. This leads me to believe much of the surface noise I hear on many records could be stubborn dirt caked in the grooves. Unless a record looks obviously dirty, I normally do the quick wash routine (GrooveWasher wipe + quick HG cycle). It now looks like this might not clean enough.

So... I cannot be bothered to do the above 1 hour clean for every record so I was thinking I might look at a different way that minimises the time and effort required (especially the two-step manual clean as it is also messy).

Should I invest in a vacuum cleaner (like Pro-Ject VCS)? Or is the blow out purchase of a Degritter going to give me significantly better results and a true all-in-one solution? Something else?

Restrictions are space (not sure where I could fit a vacuum cleaner on top of the US) and not wanting a laborious/messy system. Ah yeah and £2.5k for the Degritter seems silly money - though my collection is growing by about 10 records per month, I still only have about 500 titles.

 

[nopiano]

If we are lucky, someone might have tried these. I haven’t, but I did enjoy an afternoon listening to Ortofon’s range cartridges a few years ago, ending with their then top MC retailing at about three grand.

In an interval. I realised there was scarcely a tick or pop heard, so I looked closer at the gear. They did use a rare transformer for the MC models, which ime give the best results when well matched. But no trick electronics so I asked one of the reps. Bear in mind they were carting a dozen cartridges and a top Pro-ject turntable around the UK on a ‘roadshow’ to showcase their cartridges.

“Well, we did use a Pro-ject record cleaner before we left base (the Henley Audio premises), but nothing since”, said the rep. That lodged in my brain, and were I to encounter cleaning issues in further I decided I’d get one. They’ve since been improved to make quieter I believe, and my ATC dealer in Bath (now closed) used one too. ‘Nuff said!