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Audio desk Pro RCM

L

Lordhenley

pfm Member
Happy New Year all

Was looking for a bit of a favour, does anyone in the West Midlands use one of these machines to clean vinyl? If so I was wondering if I could pop round to see the machine in action and get a couple of records cleaned, I’m contemplating one of these machines to clean my vinyl

Any help much appreciated

Lee
 
Very best wishes for 2018, one and all.

OK, I have actual experience of the grand total of one record-cleaning machine (Moth - £400 as a very simply assembled kit, less as a used item) - and the choice about which one was made for me - it came up at an attractive price here on PFM.

Irrespective of what any advertising spiel may claim, what you can use to clean records is very limited - water, surfactant/detergent and iso-propyl alcohol is really about it in the real world. Don't get sucked into any debate about one or other surfactant being leagues better than another either...........................

RCM are also not the panacea for all snap, crackle and pop issues either. Records either come clean and (largely) free of noise rather easily, or not to any worthwhile degree at all.

So, if anyone wants to clean the occasional record, whether new or second-hand, pretty much any machine, even very careful hand-cleaning, will do the job if anything is going to. If you are lazy, like me, a cheap automated (or even hand-operated) machine will suffice. If you have stacks upon stacks of records to clean, as a one-off, look at hiring a more automated system.

Over £2K for a machine - you're having a giraffe, surely?

P.S. I have used Nagaoka sleeves going way back before I can remember (probably because I worked in the plastics industry for 17 years from leaving school and recorded music was unknown to my parents, and me, until quite a while after me leaving school), so I am making educated guesses, but record care and storage will be at least as important as cleaning all but the filthiest second-hand records.
 
I took a couple of records over to Aldermaston where there is a dealer (he may even be the importer) for these machines. His demo machine had just come back from a reviewer and he hadn’t changed the fluid. I cleaned a couple of discs on the machine and we played them on the Clearaudio he had set up with one of their mm cartridges. There was a nice improvement and the real dirty disc I’d taken over that had defeated all my attempts to clean it on a VPI to the extent of still leaving a mat on the stylus played OK. I couldn’t carry one home at the time (I was on a moto guzzi and had no bungees) but placed an order and arranged to come over the next day to pick it up. However I played those two discs when I got home with a 17D3, the better of the two left a slight oily deposit on the stylus and the real stinker was still frying bacon and leaving mats on the stylus. The 17D3 has a very fine tip, possibly the finest readily available and was getting deeper into the grooves than the Clearaudio MM, I cancelled my order. I think the slight oily deposit was due to the unchanged fluid from previous use so probably not typical and it won’t clean right to the bottom of the grooves but it did improve the discs when played on a less fine stylus to a worthwhile extent and it’s really convenient to use, still not buying it though.
I later managed to get that problem LP clean with an enzume cleaner from Nitty Gritty and it no longer leave a mat on the stylus.
 
I met someone last year who purchased one of these a couple of years back,the LP's stopped rotating,as it was out of warranty his only option to fix the issue was to send it back to the manufacturer and they would exchange it for a refurbed unit at a cost of £500 IIRC,needless to say he didn't bother.
 
I have to say that enzyme cleaning records is a new one on me....................

That said, there is no way on earth a company selling record cleaning fluid will have developed their own enzymes - they will be using enzymes developed for biological washing powders, maybe just using a filtered solution of one of the biological pre-wash soak powders or whatever. The cost of such development and testing, not least to get them H&S approved for sale to Joe Public, would be truly horrific.

Anyone tried something like Biotex for cleaning records? (It would only need to be incredibly dilute.)
 
misterdog said:
Or the medical industry, where they use such in ultrasonic cleaners.
Click to expand...

They might charge more than Nitty Gritty for it in that case..........................only £20 per half litre, and that very likely to deteriorate before anyone could reasonably be expected to have need of more than a tiny fraction of it.
 
That’s an interesting experience you had there, and to be honest was one of the reasons I was wanting to try one out and bring the records back home. I do already have a wet n dry RCM which does an admirable job but is labour intensive and mind numbing at times, especially when you clean quite a few at a time. I was basically looking for a machine where I could clean a record, then play it and whilst playing the record I could be cleaning another one etc. I will try a couple of local dealers to see if they’re have one for me to try out

Many thanks

Lee




yeti42 said:
I took a couple of records over to Aldermaston where there is a dealer (he may even be the importer) for these machines. His demo machine had just come back from a reviewer and he hadn’t changed the fluid. I cleaned a couple of discs on the machine and we played them on the Clearaudio he had set up with one of their mm cartridges. There was a nice improvement and the real dirty disc I’d taken over that had defeated all my attempts to clean it on a VPI to the extent of still leaving a mat on the stylus played OK. I couldn’t carry one home at the time (I was on a moto guzzi and had no bungees) but placed an order and arranged to come over the next day to pick it up. However I played those two discs when I got home with a 17D3, the better of the two left a slight oily deposit on the stylus and the real stinker was still frying bacon and leaving mats on the stylus. The 17D3 has a very fine tip, possibly the finest readily available and was getting deeper into the grooves than the Clearaudio MM, I cancelled my order. I think the slight oily deposit was due to the unchanged fluid from previous use so probably not typical and it won’t clean right to the bottom of the grooves but it did improve the discs when played on a less fine stylus to a worthwhile extent and it’s really convenient to use, still not buying it though.
I later managed to get that problem LP clean with an enzume cleaner from Nitty Gritty and it no longer leave a mat on the stylus.
Click to expand...
 
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