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Kitchen-sink confessional...

Posted by mr.bear (A) on March 31, 2017 at 11:33:22

In Reply to: my favorite:"chock full of butt-sniffers" LOL posted by 3+4=5 on March 31, 2017 at 10:08:22:

Firstly my records are the soundtracks of my life and I listen to them for pure pleasure of listening to the music, not pursuing audiophiliac nirvana. If they have a few pops and ticks- no biggie. We're weeding through my collection massively right now, a couple-year long project, which includes plowing in around 700-800 'new' old LP's never heard before in the Bearcave. Some of these are pretty grubby. I wash an occasional one in the sink with a tiny bit of foam on a sponge from ordinary dish soap, rinse them thoroughly, dry with microfiber towels.

I follow sink-washing with a careful cleansing using my microbrew record cleaner (a variant of isopropyl + Triton + distilled water) and a thorough brushing with a carbon-fiber pad. Records treated this way played years later sound fine and appear very clean. The amount of deterioration affecting the vinyl matrix etcetc must be minimal, unnoticeable.

If you washed a record in a strong degreaser 100 times it might crumble to dust, but one time- followed by normal daily cleaning- no problems. Just avoid any crap that will deposit on your stylus dandruff of any sort. I never play records with any wetness discernable- styli can become unglued if wetted with the wrong stuff.

Here's a TRUE Bear adventure in hand cleaning: Flipping the moldy heap at one of the local thrifts, I chanced on an LP that had been sitting in their filthy bins BARE NEKKID (no sleeve, jacket) for a long time. 'Creedence's Greatest Hits.' You wouldn't fob this thing off to your worst enemy. It was totally covered with ground-in fingerprints, footprints, handprints, a few light scuffs, and visible peanut butter in the grooves.

I thought this baby is the ACID TEST for my hand-cleaning regime. I took it home, scrubbed it with very light foam of Dawn dish-detergent and a sponge in the kitchen sink and rinsed it with tapwater. Before it could fully dry I sprayed it with my homebrew, and rubbed it HARD with a microfiber cloth, turning the cloth, then hard with the carbon fiber pad. Elapsed time, about 3-4 minutes. Beautiful- clear lively sound, decently low level of surface noise, a few ticks below 'average' for all my 70's LP's, some of which were abused at the hands of demented drug-addled hippies!

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