New ultrasonic vinyl cleaner in the works: Humminguru

Angsty said:
I agree that a surfactant wetting agent ups the game.

Despite the recoil of wary audiophiles, 0.05 ml of JetDry (one eyedropper drop) in the tank gets the job done quite well with no damage to the vinyl or the Guru. I’ve outlined the whys and hows of this in other posts, so I won’t repeat it here.
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When I checked out the price of G Sonic on Amazon, I was amused.

I’m currently reading a book about cognitive biases and was enormously tempted to apply that lens to a comparison of G Sonic to Jet-Dry!
 
Angsty said:
When I checked out the price of G Sonic on Amazon, I was amused.

I’m currently reading a book about cognitive biases and was enormously tempted to apply that lens to a comparison of G Sonic to Jet-Dry!
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I suppose my assumption is that G-Sonic is a simpler formulation, since it's targeted specifically at cleaning vinyl rather than maximizing the sparkle of my stemware, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were functionally very similar. I do think Jet-Dry has additives that are specifically designed to increase surface shine. Maybe it's not a huge deal at the concentrations we'd be using.
 
I bought a bottle of gsonic a while ago but am just getting around to trying it today. I put one drop in the tank. So far I see that it's wetting the records more, but it's also making it much worse at drying them. Now it leaves rings of moisture rather than the odd drop or two. And there are bubbles in the water. Is that normal with gsonic?
 
Hemotep said:
I bought a bottle of gsonic a while ago but am just getting around to trying it today. I put one drop in the tank. So far I see that it's wetting the records more, but it's also making it much worse at drying them. Now it leaves rings of moisture rather than the odd drop or two. And there are bubbles in the water. Is that normal with gsonic?
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Slight bubbling, yes. Should make drying better, though, at least in my experience.
 
Hemotep said:
I bought a bottle of gsonic a while ago but am just getting around to trying it today. I put one drop in the tank. So far I see that it's wetting the records more, but it's also making it much worse at drying them. Now it leaves rings of moisture rather than the odd drop or two. And there are bubbles in the water. Is that normal with gsonic?
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5 or 10 minute dry? My default is always 10 minute dry because I don't want the issue of mistakenly putting something back in a sleeve wet.
 
folsom_lives said:
5 or 10 minute dry? My default is always 10 minute dry because I don't want the issue of mistakenly putting something back in a sleeve wet.
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Five used to be enough for me, but I tried ten minutes on the last one and it still had one ring where the water was stuck in a couple grooves. Strange.
 
Hemotep said:
Five used to be enough for me, but I tried ten minutes on the last one and it still had one ring where the water was stuck in a couple grooves. Strange.
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That is genuinely very weird. I almost never have any water left on the records, and when I do it’s a single drop in the run-out.
 
I only ever got drops on the very outside or inside of records (and usually in winter). But when I started getting more and not understanding it, it was in hindsight a sign that one of the fans had blown up. Finally became obvious when the other one went.
 
kvetcha said:
I suppose my assumption is that G-Sonic is a simpler formulation, since it's targeted specifically at cleaning vinyl rather than maximizing the sparkle of my stemware, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were functionally very similar. I do think Jet-Dry has additives that are specifically designed to increase surface shine. Maybe it's not a huge deal at the concentrations we'd be using.
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I used to have a link in a thread that pointed to an article discussing the chemistry of Jet Dry. I think the link broke. But, no - there are no additives in Jet Dry that create a shine. The shine is due to an absence of dried minerals and detergent on the surface of the glassware.

Concentrations can be even lower than I indicated and still be effective; I just cited a convenient nominal amount.

I giggle at the notion of “targeted specifically at cleaning vinyl rather than maximizing the sparkle of my stemware”. The chemistry is just chemistry - that’s what I paid attention to.

As it’s made by Groovewasher, I’m skeptical that G Sonic is not just G2 in a different, more expensive bottle. $35 for 30ml of surfactant is quite a marketing feat!
 
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Angsty said:
I used to have a link in a thread that pointed to an article discussing the chemistry of Jet Dry. I think the link broke. But, no, there are no additives in Jet Dry that create a shine. The shine is due to an absence of dried minerals on the surface of the glassware.

Concentrations can be even lower than I indicated and still be effective; I just cited a convenient nominal amount.
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Hey, no debate from me. Our water is quite hard so Jet-Dry is in constant supply in this household.

Maybe once the G-Sonic runs out.
 
Angsty said:
used to have a link in a thread that pointed to an article discussing the chemistry of Jet Dry. I think the link broke.
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Just as a point of archival, I believe this to be the text of the NY Times article whose link broke.
———
Finish Jet-Dry rinse aid has a bunch of stuff in it, but it isn’t complicated, really. Here’s a rundown of the contents:
  • Water is necessary to dissolve all the other stuff.
  • Alcohol ethoxylate is a nonionic (uncharged) surfactant that helps the water slide off your dishes better and thus helps them dry faster. This ingredient is probably the most important bit in rinse aids; more on how it works in a minute.
  • Sodium polycarboxylate is an anti-redeposition polymer that wraps itself around the crud that the dishwasher just washed off so that the bits don’t get stuck again on your dishes.
  • Citric acid, which RB (the company that makes Jet-Dry) calls a complexing/sequestering agent, is really good at grabbing calcium ions out of hard water. Calcium can bind with surfactants and keep them from cleaning and rinsing dishes, so citric acid acts as kind of a sacrificial lamb to keep calcium from interfering.
  • Sodium cumene sulfonate is another surfactant but with an electric charge, so it’s a bit better at breaking water’s surface tension on your dishes than alcohol ethoxylate, but it’s also more foamy. Foam is bad in a rinse aid, so that’s why such products use both kinds of surfactant.
  • Tetrasodium EDTA is a chelating agent. EDTA is short for ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. It’s this funky-looking molecule that wraps its four arms around dissolved minerals in the water (such as calcium). The word chelate comes from the Greek word for “claw,” so you can imagine this molecule sinking its claws into minerals and whisking them away, similar to what citric acid does.
  • Methylisothiazolinone and methylchloroisothiazolinone (aka MI and MCI) are both preservatives, meaning they keep bacteria from growing in your bottle of rinse aid. Both are capable of causing skin allergies and are sensitizers, meaning that if you’re exposed to them over and over again, you can develop an allergy. But since rinse aid doesn’t sit on your skin and washes away completely from your dishes, I wouldn’t worry about it here.
  • CI Acid Blue 9 is dye. It makes the rinse aid blue. Why does it need to be blue? I have no idea, although colored solutions are easier to see in that little rinse-aid compartment.
The article had more about the low concentrations required to do the job, but I think you get the idea regarding chemistry.
 
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