Cleaning Solutions, Do They Work?

[Blake H]

Bought a few records recently that have been stored in a garage for a few years, most look ok but all have crackles when played. Mild detergent and warm water seems ok but still not 100%, can anyone recomend any of the record cleaning fluids that are about?

BH

[Sean Hampsey]

Bought a few records recently that have been stored in a garage for a few years, most look ok but all have crackles when played. Mild detergent and warm water seems ok but still not 100%, can anyone recomend any of the record cleaning fluids that are about?

BH

Blake,

Whatever you do, don't try VIM.

Kitchen surfaces... Winner.... but it has the opposite effect on vinyl... I find!

Seriously tho'... I've always found that pure, clean, H2O works well with cotton wool.

Sean

[Simon T]

Bought a few records recently that have been stored in a garage for a few years, most look ok but all have crackles when played. Mild detergent and warm water seems ok but still not 100%, can anyone recomend any of the record cleaning fluids that are about?

BH

Don't use any kind of detergent

Nip down the chemists and see if they'll order you a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. It's very inflammeable so no smoking, but works wonders and if you get it on the label, just let it dry / evaporate. DON'T get it near any acetate!!!!! It'll melt it!

Most importantly is the cleaning cloth; try to get some lint free stuff like base ('uck knows how you spell it), the stuff they use on snooker tables, you can get bits form optitions, but it's bloody expensive from them.

[45cellar]

Bought a few records recently that have been stored in a garage for a few years, most look ok but all have crackles when played. Mild detergent and warm water seems ok but still not 100%, can anyone recomend any of the record cleaning fluids that are about?

BH

Hi

If necessary I use antibacterial - all purpose wipes - on the vinyl - then rinse under the tap.

(Always take care with label)

In extreme cases I have used ORDINARY toothpaste and soft brush, again rinsing under the tap. Do not over do it, as toothpaste is a mild abrasive.

The rule of thumb with any cleaning method is to be careful , espesially with the label.

Test any cleaning method on a record that you don't care about first, if you are in any way unsure.

[Guest TONY ROUNCE]

Nip down the chemists and see if they'll order you a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. It's very inflammeable so no smoking, but works wonders and if you get it on the label, just let it dry / evaporate. DON'T get it near any acetate!!!!! It'll melt it!

To be on the safe side you should dilute your isopropyl with water, at a ratio of two parts water to one part isopropyl. That's the way that seems to work for professionals, and it makes your isopropyl go further, too!

TONE

[Guest]

To be on the safe side you should dilute your isopropyl with water, at a ratio of two parts water to one part isopropyl. That's the way that seems to work for professionals, and it makes your isopropyl go further, too!

TONE

DO NOT USE any chemicals on vinyl and especially styrene. I went to see a collection recently where an EMITEX cloth had damaged many valuable 45s (made them hiss). That "oil film" style stain you see on the occasional 45 is caused by Meths or Alcohol.

I use a greenfly spray bottle filled with WATER and a drop of fairy liquid. Seriously all "strong" chemicals should be kept away from rare soul vinyl, it penetrates and destroys the sound sound quality over many years. Once it's on the surface it's too late..

[Guest For Real]

DO NOT USE any chemicals on vinyl and especially styrene. I went to see a collection recently where an EMITEX cloth had damaged many valuable 45s (made them hiss). That "oil film" style stain you see on the occasional 45 is caused by Meths or Alcohol.

I use a greenfly spray bottle filled with WATER and a drop of fairy liquid. Seriously all "strong" chemicals should be kept away from rare soul vinyl, it penetrates and destroys the sound sound quality over many years. Once it's on the surface it's too late..

That's very interesting info John. Does the same apply to the specialist recording cleaning / anti static products. Eg I've found 'permostat' to do wonders at cleaning and removing static hiss... but is this damaging the record in the long term?

Cheers

Mark

[Soul-slider]

white vinegar is the stuff, guaranteed!

[Blake H]

The chastening fact is, the first and worst thing one can do with one of your records is take it out of its sleeve. No, I didn't really mean that. (I know full well some records should never be taken out of their sleeves (my son has dozens of them!) What I mean is this.

Records are made of plastic, as you know actually, a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate which forms part of a list of materials we call a triobic series. If any two of these materials come into contact with one another and are then separated, the material higher in the list acquires an electrostatic charge of positive polarity and the one below it in the list gets a negative charge. Since the vinyl used for discs is near the bottom of the list, it follows that most sleeve materials are likely to give the records a charge merely as we remove it; and since most sleeves are made of either paper or another plastic higher in the list, the record ends up negatively charged almost every time. Some plastics are low in the triobic list than vinyl-PTFE is one; but a safe rule is, that the charge will be negative.

Actually, the polarity does not concern us at this stage; its effect does. The charge level can be quite massive given a dry environment, reaching at the moment of removal from the sleeve many kilovolts of magnitude. Not lethal, of course-it is virtually current less; but the effect is to attract within the immediate area of the disc's two surfaces every floating particle of dust in the atmosphere, which will stick there with a tenacity that beats any known glue and defies all attempts at removal by any orthodox cleaning method, which invariably make the situation worse by "topping up" the charge. Handling the disc doesn't help, either: human skin is fairly high in the triobic list. To compound your increasing despair, when you come to play the thing, the movement of the disc beneath the pickup can emulate a miniature Van de Graff generator: minute discharges across the stylus tip result in some pretty unnerving cracks out of your speaker system that sound like lumps of granite in the grooves.

So when I say friends, that static electricity is the major inhibiting factor in getting the best reproduction out of your records, you will appreciate I do not do so without carefully considering all the factors involved.

This is all very well, you may say, but what can one do about it? Well, a number of proprietary remedies are on offer in the hill marketplace;gadgets such as "guns" that generate ionized particles supposed to neutralize the charge. Unfortunately, their efficacy is sometimes questionable, especially when the device generates anions as well as the desirable cations. And in any case the effect can only be short since as soon as the record is handled again it starts to build up yet another charge.

For a long term, or permanent solution we have to turn to chemical means. Again, a number of excellent, usually very expensive proprietary preparations are on the market. They are based on a group of specialized chemicals called surfactants-a fancy name for what you and I call detergents! However, they are as I said, a special group. Surfactants have a number of interesting properties, anyone of which will, if we select care fully, be valuable in our battle with static.

All are in varying degress water-attracting, or hydrophilic, and at one and the same time water-repellant, or hydrophobic. The hydrophobic portion of the molecule may also carry a residual charge. If not, it is nonionic: if it carries a negative charge, then it is anionic; and if the charge is positive, then it is described as being cationic. A number of other subtle properties will determine a particular surfactant's suitability as an anti-static agent. Suffice it to say that some degree of hydrophilic-ness is desirable, since a damp disc is more likely to dissipate a charge quickly; and a surfeit of positive ions to neutralize the disc's negative charge is also desirable.

A number of specialized and highly effective cationic surfactants are available from most large chemical companies. One fact emerged from my experiments, that even a minute amount applied to the surface of the disc is enough for a lifetime cure. Much of the literature suggests that about 0.5% solution is enough to apply an inert film about a molecule thick. The literature also suggests that the material ought ideally to be added to the plastic when the disc is made for 100% effectiveness. It is sad that so few record manufacturers have shown any interest in the durability and quality of their product, although some treated discs have been produced on a limited scale in Japan.

Anyway, another fact emerged. Since the constituents of these commercially available antistatic solutions are so cheap, but the final product is far from being so, The Audio Amateur readers might like to make up their own. All you need is the basic antistatic agent. A 5cc. phial will, in 0.5% solution, make up a liter of antistatic fluid, enough for a very large collection.

The solvent should be easily obtainable, since it is a 1: 1 mix of propanol (or isopropyl alcohol) and pure water. I emphasize pure water, not water from the faucet since this contains salts and other matter. You can use deionised water such as is used for topping up auto batteries; or better still, save the melted ice next time you defrost the freezer or refrigerator. Add the cationic surfactant to this solvent and that's it-nothing more. Don't use pure propanol as the solvent as some commercial preparations do, since this may adversely affect the plasticizors in the record; it also dries just that mite too quickly.

Application is easy after you have removed any surface dirt with a slightly damp, lint less cloth. You'll need a fine spray, such as one used for perfume or deodorant. Just spray a couple of puffs in each half of the disc's surface-no more: it is better to use too little initially, rather than overdo it. Then gently wipe around the surface with a plush record cleaning pad-plenty of those around. Do one side, allow it to dry, and treat the other side.

The next step is to play it. One of the most effective groove cleaners is the stylus tip, provided it doesn't have to compete with a static charge holding the dirt rigidly in the groove. If the treatment has been successful, you may well need to clean the stylus tip half-way through. Each successive playing should make the grooves increasingly less noisy. If you can use a conical stylus rather than one of the elliptical variants, so much the better; they do a much more effective cleaning job.

If you want to check how effective your treatment has been tear a paper napkin into small fragments and lay them on a clean surface. Rub the record gently with a silk or nylon cloth and pass the disc surface near the paper fragments. An untreated disc will end up covered in paper fragments, which will be extraordinarily difficult to remove! If your treatment has been successful, the paper will totally ignore the disc; you may then assume it will need no further attention for the remainder of the record's natural life.

Reginald Williamson

Excerpt from an articleThe Audio Amateur magazine.

February, 1982

Back to Loricraft page

PHEWWW!!

BH

[soulsalmon]

Don't use any kind of detergent

Nip down the chemists and see if they'll order you a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. It's very inflammeable so no smoking, but works wonders and if you get it on the label, just let it dry / evaporate. DON'T get it near any acetate!!!!! It'll melt it!

Most importantly is the cleaning cloth; try to get some lint free stuff like base ('uck knows how you spell it), the stuff they use on snooker tables, you can get bits form optitions, but it's bloody expensive from them.

if you cant get isopropyl,try a cd lens cleaner,monitor cleaner,they are usually a mix of isopropyl & water.dont know if this work,never tried it ,but been told to use a decorators tack cloth first to get rid ingrained dust/dirt ,it contains an organic gum,leaves a residue but the iso will remove it .good luck Salmon

[Guest TONY ROUNCE]

DO NOT USE any chemicals on vinyl and especially styrene. I went to see a collection recently where an EMITEX cloth had damaged many valuable 45s (made them hiss). That "oil film" style stain you see on the occasional 45 is caused by Meths or Alcohol.

I use a greenfly spray bottle filled with WATER and a drop of fairy liquid. Seriously all "strong" chemicals should be kept away from rare soul vinyl, it penetrates and destroys the sound sound quality over many years. Once it's on the surface it's too late..

...Sorry, John, Ispropyl Alcohol only penetrates and destroys crap in grooves, not the grooves themselves. You can ask any professional sound restorer (including the guys at the National Sound Archive, who put me onto Isopropyl in the first place) and they'll tell you the same. It's OK on acetates too, as long as it's diluted and used sparingly.

I'm not a professional sound restorer, of course, but I've used it for years and my collection seems to be suffering no ill effects as a result. If you know anyone who's buggered up a record by use of this particular chemical, blame it on incompetence on the part of the the user rather than the Isopropyl itself.

I would agree, though, that if you're only trying to lift a layer of storage dirt or similar, nothing will do the job better than water and Fairy Liquid.

TONY

[Guest Baz]

Also if you give it a good clean and play it 'wet' the stylus helps drag out any unwanted residue in he groove, or so i've herd?

[Mark W]

What's a VPI machine? Seen these mentioned by a few Ebay sellers.

Any Audio Amatuer contributors please restrict descriptions to 10,000 words

[Larsc]

What's a VPI machine? Seen these mentioned by a few Ebay sellers.

Any Audio Amatuer contributors please restrict descriptions to 10,000 words

It's a machine that's on my wishlist

Take a look here:

https://www.hifiplus.com/t-rev1-3.html

This is the model I would buy:

https://www.vpiindustries.com/17.htm

[Guest Baz]

Some one posted up a link of how to make your own VPI cleaning machine cant remember where it was though, looked quite straight forward to do

[Larsc]

Some one posted up a link of how to make your own VPI cleaning machine cant remember where it was though, looked quite straight forward to do

This ?

https://www.teresaudio.com/haven/cleaner/cleaner.html

For those of you who are not afraid of texts with more than 1000 words there's a nice test of a manual cleaning system here:

https://www.positive-feedback.com/pfbackiss.../kinch.6n5.html

Edited June 4, 2006 by LarsC

[Guest meaty]

I bought this one recently, and I love it...

https://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/kabev1_e.html

cheap, and effective!

[Blake H]

I bought this one recently, and I love it...

https://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/kabev1_e.html

cheap, and effective!

I'm off out to the shed now with the Dyson (not Andy!) the pressure washer and my toolbox, Wallace and Grommit & Barnes Wallace aint got nothing on me.

BH

[Guest]

I'm off out to the shed now with the Dyson (not Andy!) the pressure washer and my toolbox, Wallace and Grommit & Barnes Wallace aint got nothing on me.

BH

im sure glenn henning of select45rpm uses bleach and the washes it off under the tap dont get it on the label though

[Guest]

a professional cleaning machine is out of question for me, i just can´t afford one at the moment, but from time to time i start wondering whether there are solutions that have a dramatical improvement on the sound quality (especially on those 45s that have been laying around in some unhealthy environment for ages and don´t look scratched at all, but sound terrible). something between the low-end DIY-cleaner (distilled water, fairy and a bit isopropyl) and the high end nitty gritty or vpi cleaning machine.

web research keeps ending up with 2 different cleaning fluids that, according to forums etc. are supposed to do a really amazingly good job, which are the rrl record cleaner and the disc doctor miracle record cleaner, in combination with their cleaning brushes for 45s (these semm to really good). i bet if there were a store in the neighborhood selling this, i would have bought it a year ago already, but i kept hesitating, because i couldn´t find any european reseler of this stuff.

has anybody tried any of these, fluids or the brushes? what were your experiences? i´m still willing to order directly from the usa if that´s the only way...

thx, cheers, and excuse weird wordings and sentence constructions, please

[Stuart Bower]

Blake,

Whatever you do, don't try VIM.

Kitchen surfaces... Winner.... but it has the opposite effect on vinyl... I find!

Seriously tho'... I've always found that pure, clean, H2O works well with cotton wool.

Sean

That`s what I like on a Sunday Sean! A bit of comedy!!

But haven`t we discussed this subject before?

Edited June 4, 2006 by The Soul Intention

[Jumpinjoan]

I bought a vinyl cleaning machine a few months back .... and i have to say the difference in before and after is unbelieveable ....

Wasn't cheap ... around the £300 mark ... but when you compare that to the price of records now ... works out cheap in comparison.

Worth every penny in my book

[arnie j]

The chastening fact is, the first and worst thing one can do with one of your records is take it out of its sleeve. No, I didn't really mean that. (I know full well some records should never be taken out of their sleeves (my son has dozens of them!) What I mean is this.

Records are made of plastic, as you know actually, a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate which forms part of a list of materials we call a triobic series. If any two of these materials come into contact with one another and are then separated, the material higher in the list acquires an electrostatic charge of positive polarity and the one below it in the list gets a negative charge. Since the vinyl used for discs is near the bottom of the list, it follows that most sleeve materials are likely to give the records a charge merely as we remove it; and since most sleeves are made of either paper or another plastic higher in the list, the record ends up negatively charged almost every time. Some plastics are low in the triobic list than vinyl-PTFE is one; but a safe rule is, that the charge will be negative.

Actually, the polarity does not concern us at this stage; its effect does. The charge level can be quite massive given a dry environment, reaching at the moment of removal from the sleeve many kilovolts of magnitude. Not lethal, of course-it is virtually current less; but the effect is to attract within the immediate area of the disc's two surfaces every floating particle of dust in the atmosphere, which will stick there with a tenacity that beats any known glue and defies all attempts at removal by any orthodox cleaning method, which invariably make the situation worse by "topping up" the charge. Handling the disc doesn't help, either: human skin is fairly high in the triobic list. To compound your increasing despair, when you come to play the thing, the movement of the disc beneath the pickup can emulate a miniature Van de Graff generator: minute discharges across the stylus tip result in some pretty unnerving cracks out of your speaker system that sound like lumps of granite in the grooves.

So when I say friends, that static electricity is the major inhibiting factor in getting the best reproduction out of your records, you will appreciate I do not do so without carefully considering all the factors involved.

This is all very well, you may say, but what can one do about it? Well, a number of proprietary remedies are on offer in the hill marketplace;gadgets such as "guns" that generate ionized particles supposed to neutralize the charge. Unfortunately, their efficacy is sometimes questionable, especially when the device generates anions as well as the desirable cations. And in any case the effect can only be short since as soon as the record is handled again it starts to build up yet another charge.

For a long term, or permanent solution we have to turn to chemical means. Again, a number of excellent, usually very expensive proprietary preparations are on the market. They are based on a group of specialized chemicals called surfactants-a fancy name for what you and I call detergents! However, they are as I said, a special group. Surfactants have a number of interesting properties, anyone of which will, if we select care fully, be valuable in our battle with static.

All are in varying degress water-attracting, or hydrophilic, and at one and the same time water-repellant, or hydrophobic. The hydrophobic portion of the molecule may also carry a residual charge. If not, it is nonionic: if it carries a negative charge, then it is anionic; and if the charge is positive, then it is described as being cationic. A number of other subtle properties will determine a particular surfactant's suitability as an anti-static agent. Suffice it to say that some degree of hydrophilic-ness is desirable, since a damp disc is more likely to dissipate a charge quickly; and a surfeit of positive ions to neutralize the disc's negative charge is also desirable.

A number of specialized and highly effective cationic surfactants are available from most large chemical companies. One fact emerged from my experiments, that even a minute amount applied to the surface of the disc is enough for a lifetime cure. Much of the literature suggests that about 0.5% solution is enough to apply an inert film about a molecule thick. The literature also suggests that the material ought ideally to be added to the plastic when the disc is made for 100% effectiveness. It is sad that so few record manufacturers have shown any interest in the durability and quality of their product, although some treated discs have been produced on a limited scale in Japan.

Anyway, another fact emerged. Since the constituents of these commercially available antistatic solutions are so cheap, but the final product is far from being so, The Audio Amateur readers might like to make up their own. All you need is the basic antistatic agent. A 5cc. phial will, in 0.5% solution, make up a liter of antistatic fluid, enough for a very large collection.

The solvent should be easily obtainable, since it is a 1: 1 mix of propanol (or isopropyl alcohol) and pure water. I emphasize pure water, not water from the faucet since this contains salts and other matter. You can use deionised water such as is used for topping up auto batteries; or better still, save the melted ice next time you defrost the freezer or refrigerator. Add the cationic surfactant to this solvent and that's it-nothing more. Don't use pure propanol as the solvent as some commercial preparations do, since this may adversely affect the plasticizors in the record; it also dries just that mite too quickly.

Application is easy after you have removed any surface dirt with a slightly damp, lint less cloth. You'll need a fine spray, such as one used for perfume or deodorant. Just spray a couple of puffs in each half of the disc's surface-no more: it is better to use too little initially, rather than overdo it. Then gently wipe around the surface with a plush record cleaning pad-plenty of those around. Do one side, allow it to dry, and treat the other side.

The next step is to play it. One of the most effective groove cleaners is the stylus tip, provided it doesn't have to compete with a static charge holding the dirt rigidly in the groove. If the treatment has been successful, you may well need to clean the stylus tip half-way through. Each successive playing should make the grooves increasingly less noisy. If you can use a conical stylus rather than one of the elliptical variants, so much the better; they do a much more effective cleaning job.

If you want to check how effective your treatment has been tear a paper napkin into small fragments and lay them on a clean surface. Rub the record gently with a silk or nylon cloth and pass the disc surface near the paper fragments. An untreated disc will end up covered in paper fragments, which will be extraordinarily difficult to remove! If your treatment has been successful, the paper will totally ignore the disc; you may then assume it will need no further attention for the remainder of the record's natural life.

Reginald Williamson

Excerpt from an articleThe Audio Amateur magazine.

February, 1982

Back to Loricraft page

PHEWWW!!

BH

crikey !

[Guest]

After reading this lot i must be an Heathen then!

Stick em in warm water -

squirt on washing up liquid- rub up into grooves anti clockwise with finger tip (ideally free of segs) you can easily feel foreign objects-until evenly spread.

Get small washing up sponge (the ones with scourer on one side (dont cut it off it helps to keep its shape)

Dab down onto disc (going anti clockwise dont rub sponge round though) and lift off !

Carying on round like this creates a satisfying sucking effect as you pull of the sponge,

The idea is to lift the grime off.

After going round a couple of times the soap becomes more of a sticky medium which sucking effects you can feel becoming stronger-Do both sides.

Run under the cold tap to rinse,

Play the disc wet - both sides ( not megga pooled with water but wet or it may aqua plane the needle )

Needle vibrations help to dislodge the muck.

Now take it off and repeat the washing liquid suction method,

Give it a real good swill with tap water after ,

Leave to dry 5 mins job done!

Gets rid of scratches and works a treat on the sonics!

Never lost a label yet!

Not used the anti- static stuff but sounds intersting?

Am i an Heathen????

or are there more of us Heathens out there using the Fairy!

[Guest]

...Sorry, John, Ispropyl Alcohol only penetrates and destroys crap in grooves, not the grooves themselves. You can ask any professional sound restorer (including the guys at the National Sound Archive, who put me onto Isopropyl in the first place) and they'll tell you the same. It's OK on acetates too, as long as it's diluted and used sparingly.

I'm not a professional sound restorer, of course, but I've used it for years and my collection seems to be suffering no ill effects as a result. If you know anyone who's buggered up a record by use of this particular chemical, blame it on incompetence on the part of the the user rather than the Isopropyl itself.

I would agree, though, that if you're only trying to lift a layer of storage dirt or similar, nothing will do the job better than water and Fairy Liquid.

TONY

Styrene and acetates don't go with Isopropyl Alcohol or any other chemical. Do any of these sound restorers actually do it to £1000 records. Gimme a break? Yes, in the short term it gets them lovely and clean. If you own a valuable recordS treat them as such, no chemicals, cardboard sleeves or VIM. Edited June 5, 2006 by john manship

[Stuart Bower]

if you cant get isopropyl,try a cd lens cleaner,monitor cleaner,they are usually a mix of isopropyl & water.dont know if this work,never tried it ,but been told to use a decorators tack cloth first to get rid ingrained dust/dirt ,it contains an organic gum,leaves a residue but the iso will remove it .good luck Salmon

I`ve heard of vodka being used instead of the isopropyl, but it must be pure-i.e. no harmful impurities...