Record cleaning - what's your method?

After my search through their ultrasonic cleaning thread I believe it’s a result of cleaning the record which obviously gets all the debris wet and it starts to come out, at least that’s what was the most common determination I found after sifting through all the vacuum vs ultrasonic debate.
 
Found this from RMAF on record cleaning, thought this thread might be into 70 minutes of record cleaning panel discussion.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't watched the whole thing, so I don't know where they go or what they say.


Interesting until it became a ultrasonic discussion between 2 panelists for too long. But, they did touch on some very basic cleaning rules that everyone should follow ;)
 
This was great to watch they brought up my problem also I had started using tergikleen and that’s one thing all agreed you shouldn’t use. Still glad to have a cavitation bath though.
 
..............oddly enough, one of the comment that stuck in my head was "...........GZ makes their own PVC pellets" :unsure:
 
I’m not hip to this but I’m assuming they are really good at pressing records or really bad
They're hit or miss...............more miss though and they press a lot of albums (noise, warps), hang around long enough and you'll see it mentioned, lol
 
Depending on how bad the warp on a new record and how much it cost I usually just flatten warped records but I’ve bought way more records over the last ten months then anyone should and probably 200-300 have been new and I would say maybe 5-10 percent of them are truly flat.
 
I feel like an idiot for using tergitol though it was literally the one thing they all agreed on was not to use it lol

I use tergitol and it is "toxic". It's a carcinogen, but that doesn't mean that it's bad to clean vinyl records with. The statement about it eating through machine components I can't speak to but it seems a bit outrageous. The chemical needs to be diluted appropriately. It needs to be used safely, but it probably doesn't damage records. I've never noticed an issue. The chemical needs to be rinsed off after cleaning.

Perhaps it's bad for an ultrasonic machine. Although I don't know why that would be. Perhaps there's a safer and just as good alternative, but professional archivists, people who are trained and educated in the discipline of archiving, use it so I trust it.

The implication from the ultrasonic dude that the Smithsonian doesn't know what it's doing is a laughable claim.
Like I said, I understand the toxic argument but I've seen no evidence that the surfactant tergitol damages records.
 
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I use the water soluble version of this

I dilute it 1000 to 1. I spray it on the surface of the vinyl, label is protected, I spread it with a paint edger (very soft) rotating around the record 5-10 times in each direction, I repeat on the second side. I rinse with distilled water and vacuum.

I wouldn't reccomend what I do for most people. It's essentially the same as a record cleaning machine but more manual.
 
Like many things, sometimes it's more about human "error" than it is the solution or whatever.......not insinuating you did anything wrong @Dylanfan253, just that sometimes things aren't used as they should be............but, that being said, while I'm sure @jaycee system works great, I would, personally, go with another solution that might be safer. Again........not that anyone's way of doing things is wrong ;)
 
Like many things, sometimes it's more about human "error" than it is the solution or whatever.......not insinuating you did anything wrong @Dylanfan253, just that sometimes things aren't used as they should be............but, that being said, while I'm sure @jaycee system works great, I would, personally, go with another solution that might be safer. Again........not that anyone's way of doing things is wrong ;)

Couldn't agree more.

I have a background in chemistry... I'm a scientist - not that you need to be, but the manual things I do work for me. I'll simplify to a machine at some point but I just don't want to invest in it yet and I like the manual nature of what I do.

Most people shouldn't bother with mixing their own solutions, but they should pay attention to what's in them and be able to google the safety data sheet for the chemicals involved. None of these things are something you want to bath in.

I'm curious about the cavitation method. I think it's worth doing from a science perspective, but I doubt the claims of the person on that panel are as scientifically sound as they were presented.
 
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Couldn't agree more.

I have a background in chemistry... I'm a scientist - not that you need to be, but the manual things I do work for me. I'll simplify to a machine at some point but I just don't want to invest in it yet and I like the manual nature of what I do.

Most people shouldn't bother with mixing their own solutions, but they should pay attention to what's in them and be able to google the safety data sheet for the chemicals involved. None of these things are something you want to bath in.

I'm curious about the cavitation method. I think it's worth doing from a science perspective, but I doubt the claims of the person on that panel are as scientifically sound as they were presented.
I gotta agree with ya on the one panel member, it came across more like an info-mercial. I'm sure the science is there, just presented in his own way.
 
I gotta agree with ya on the one panel member, it came across more like an info-mercial. I'm sure the science is there, just presented in his own way.

I thought this panel was the best unintentional comedy of the week! He's quite the hustler, any opening he turned into a sales spiel. And the reactions from Matt at VPI are pretty funny too. Not a scientist myself but Kirmuss does seems to veer really heavily into the pseudo-science realm for my liking, especially since he claims the rest of the manufactures are wrong. I can see why some of the others on the stage didn't like his combative approach.
 
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