advertisement


Use RCM

The problem is, especially if you use something like L'art du son, that the RCM might miss a bit (it can happen if the wand skips or momentarily loses suction), then when you re-sleeve, the liquid remnant is spread across the LP.
I would consider this operator error.
 
I've not compared them directly but I am familiar with using ultrasonic baths and I'm sure they're pretty effective. Most record cleaning systems like the VV are pretty Heath Robinson though i.e. a lab bath with some mechanism bolted on to rotate a record (or a few at a time) and are pretty cludgy to use. The other difficulty is the need to filter the bath solution or to flush it it out and replace the large volume. You must also consider the temperature of the solution as the cavitation causes the water to heat up, which might cause damage or even ignite IPA in extremis. Some baths come with ports for connecting tubing, which would allow for connection of a pump and cartridge filter system; I reckon that's the way to and I've seen it done. Some people use a combination of cleaners, vaccum and u/s to wash and then rinse.

I went with the Project VCE, it's great. The project solution is fine too, but I use water/IPA very occasionally.


The VV I share has temperature control and ultrasonic run time. I set the temp at 30 degrees and the US to around 6 minutes and once up to temp away we go. It’ll clean 3 records at a time. I don’t find it heath robinson at all. Certainly nothing has fallen off it yet either.
 
Ye gods! Two machines to do the one job? I only have my experience and that of friends with other machines to go on. I have yet to come across marks left by the felt strips (or whatever). Nor any marks left by the supplied brush.
Same here, no marks left by my Moth after the suction routine either. Someone's suggested that ultrasonic machines “by all accounts will clean the records better”. There's no evidence for this, and almost impossible to prove.
 
In my experience the ultrasonic cleaner does a more thorough job. My brother in law put a record through his ultrasonic process after it had been cleaned and played by myself and the result was it was quieter and easier to listen too. Maybe there's a "conditioning" effect from the record being in a hot bath for 20 minutes or so. Hot and cold material conditioning is used in industry so why not on a vinyl record?
 
With an ultrasonic cleaner nothing touches the record. Vibration does the cleaning and the fluid either holds the dirt in suspension or it drops to the bottom of the tank. There are no brushes to scrub dirt back into the grooves so it doesn’t matter that the fluid gets dirty. When I think the fluid is too dirty I drain it off and filter it, put it back in and top up. I do maybe thirty records and filter the fluid. Because of the way it works I recently reduced the IPA to 15% and my records are still nice and clean. The bath holds four litres of fluid. I am thinking of trying one of those filter taps that give clean drinking water. The filter is supposed to remove all the harmful deposits and might be fine for rinsing off.
 
In my experience the ultrasonic cleaner does a more thorough job. My brother in law put a record through his ultrasonic process after it had been cleaned and played by myself and the result was it was quieter and easier to listen too. Maybe there's a "conditioning" effect from the record being in a hot bath for 20 minutes or so. Hot and cold material conditioning is used in industry so why not on a vinyl record?
I see it like this - if, after one cycle the record still sounds noisy I'll give it a second go. In most cases this makes no difference, neither does any subsequent passes. This is because the record's damaged, and no amount of cleaning will improve it. In the majority of cases, one go on the Moth renders the LP completely silent.
 
I see it like this - if, after one cycle the record still sounds noisy I'll give it a second go. In most cases this makes no difference, neither does any subsequent passes. This is because the record's damaged, and no amount of cleaning will improve it. In the majority of cases, one go on the Moth renders the LP completely silent.
I have no problem with the records I clean on my Loricraft but we thought we would see if there were further benefits from ultrasonic cleaning. I believe there is but am in no way inclined towards getting an ultrasonic cleaner. Seldom do I have to clean a record twice unless it was really dirty.
 
The bath holds four litres of fluid.

Gosh! That's one heck of a lot of fluid. Bit of a guess but I think that would do many hundreds of records on my RCM. Okay, if it's a DIY IPA mix, not significant in cost, but I feel that other, proprietary fluids would be another matter.
 
I cleaned about five records, not particularly dirty to the eye, in my Humminguru Ultrasonic cleaner. I left the old distilled water in the drain tank for about a week before I poured it down the drain. I noticed a film in the bottom of the tank, a quick wipe with a tissue...
2022-01-04_10-38-35 by Garf Arf, on Flickr

Quite a bit of muck.
 
Agreed with the last two posts! That's why the vacuum systems work so well, especially if you use a cleaning solution that doesn't evaporate too quickly. I must admit, It would be interesting to hear if @Spraggons Den 's records improve with a wet/vac clean.

The answer? Yes, indeed they do!

Mr Spraggons Den popped over yesterday afternoon (always a pleasure to meet the similarly afflicted...) with three of his LPs that were noisy & his current cleaning method couldn't cure. I can't remember the names of the artists; Mr Den will enlighten. Anyway, we stuck the first disc on my LP12 for an initial listen & it was a real rice crispies job, so we managed to fire up the venerable Moth (fortunately the battery wasn't flat) & gave the album a good old soaking and sucking. TBH I wasn't too optimistic, so it was a bit of a revelation to find the crackling had more or less completely disappeared. We ran it through the Moth a second time, which didn't affect things further, but nevertheless, the record sounded pretty good and perfectly listenable, just the very occasional pop.

We "Mothed" the other two LPs with similarly effective results in terms of crackle removal, but the third one had some very distinctive marks across the playing surfaces and the runout areas. My initial reaction was that this was some form of mould, having treated a shedload of LPs thus contaminated in the past. We only really noticed it when playing the LP after the initial Moth treatment, under the bright spotlight over the LP12, but regardless, the record played silently. We ran it through the Moth again, but this had no effect on these marks. I tried rubbing the marks where they appeared on the blank areas of the runout, but these marks were deeply embedded in the vinyl somehow, and IIRC certain moulds are capable of damaging vinyl. I guess luckily this doesn't seem to have adversely affected the sound. Here's a piccy of the marks under the bright light -

rWC0ENq.jpg
 
I've frequently had similar marks which are both unaffected by cleaning and s.q. deterioration, although, from memory, my blotches weren't as scattered. When I had a few like this from a dubious charity shop batch, I eventually put it down to poor and/or damp storage, which, I guess, wouldn't affect the grooves.
 
The answer? Yes, indeed they do!

Mr Spraggons Den popped over yesterday afternoon (always a pleasure to meet the similarly afflicted...) with three of his LPs that were noisy & his current cleaning method couldn't cure. I can't remember the names of the artists; Mr Den will enlighten. Anyway, we stuck the first disc on my LP12 for an initial listen & it was a real rice crispies job, so we managed to fire up the venerable Moth (fortunately the battery wasn't flat) & gave the album a good old soaking and sucking. TBH I wasn't too optimistic, so it was a bit of a revelation to find the crackling had more or less completely disappeared. We ran it through the Moth a second time, which didn't affect things further, but nevertheless, the record sounded pretty good and perfectly listenable, just the very occasional pop.

We "Mothed" the other two LPs with similarly effective results in terms of crackle removal, but the third one had some very distinctive marks across the playing surfaces and the runout areas. My initial reaction was that this was some form of mould, having treated a shedload of LPs thus contaminated in the past. We only really noticed it when playing the LP after the initial Moth treatment, under the bright spotlight over the LP12, but regardless, the record played silently. We ran it through the Moth again, but this had no effect on these marks. I tried rubbing the marks where they appeared on the blank areas of the runout, but these marks were deeply embedded in the vinyl somehow, and IIRC certain moulds are capable of damaging vinyl. I guess luckily this doesn't seem to have adversely affected the sound. Here's a piccy of the marks under the bright light -

rWC0ENq.jpg

Yes, Tony is spot on with his account of the proceedings.

He very kindly invited me round to his lovely home whereby he proceeded to fettle my errant vinyl having first had a good listen using his LP12. Most of the crackles and pops did indeed disappear after the vacuum cleaning and the ones that remained were far less prominent, it was like they were further down in the mix. What was more surprising to me was the way the RCM clean had greatly improved the sound of the records making the music smoother and yet more dynamic. I have since played them again on my own lowly RP6 at home to confirm the positive effects and it has convinced me to buy a vacuum probably the full-size Project one.

The record with marks/mould in the picture is the late 90s favourite The Boy with the Arab Strap by Belle & Sebastian.

So thanks again Tony.

Ray
 
Last edited:
The Mrs is buying me a RCM for my 50th next month and at the moment I’m torn between the Velvet Vortex and the Project VC S2.

The Project appeals due to the convenience and the fact it does the drying and the VV as it’s ultrasonic and from everything I’ve read they clean 'better', plus all the VV reviews I’ve read on forums have been positive.

at the moment I’m leaning towards the VV and I’ll dry the records on the knosti rack I have.
 
Last edited:
at the moment I’m leaning towards the VV and I’ll dry the records on the knosti rack I have.

We each have our disparate views and mine are well=known re. vacuum and non vacuum machines. I am surprised, with the posts on this interesting thread and the recent experience of the o.p., that you would consider half a cleaning cycle, as it were, for the full monte. The ultrasonics MAY be better at cleaning, but the 'umble wet-vac. really isn't far behind, if at all.

The vac. doesn't DRY the record but it does extract sufficient to allow speedy drying by evaporation. Drying on a rack (vertically, too) just allows the contaminated fluid to leave uneven deposits, to my mind, and take an age before you're able to sleeve, assuming you can really tell if the record is bone dry.

Hey! I may be totally out of kilter on this as I haven't gone through this ultrasonic/dry by other means scenario. I also don't know the comparative running costs in fluid; a 4 litre tank seems massive to me, even if it IS filtered. What is clear to me, however, is that when I clean records, I want the WHOLE process to be a quick as possible. Unless you have two different RCMs, this, apart from aspects mentioned above, would rule out a vacuum-less machine; it's not just about the cleaning efficacy i.m.o.
 
The vac. doesn't DRY the record but it does extract sufficient to allow speedy drying by evaporation. Drying on a rack (vertically, too) just allows the contaminated fluid to leave uneven deposits to my mind, and take an age before you're able to sleeve, assuming you can really tell if the record is bone dry.

I'm sorry Mike, but that isn't my experience at all and I've cleaned thousands of records on my Loricraft. My method; apply fluid on spinning record, use the brush in both directions until the record is fully covered, leave to soak for between one and two minutes, vacuum off, taking extra care over the run-in and edge, bearing in mind that some fluid may have found it's way to the run-in on the underside. For 99% of the time, the record is sufficiently dry to re-sleeve immediately, but I just leave it horizontally on a little stand that I have, for the duration of the next clean. I don't doubt that the more recent cleaning method is better than when I first bough the machine, but that's because I have gained experience along the way.
 
I'm sorry Mike, but that isn't my experience at all and I've cleaned thousands of records on my Loricraft. My method; apply fluid on spinning record, use the brush in both directions until the record is fully covered, leave to soak for between one and two minutes, vacuum off, taking extra care over the run-in and edge, bearing in mind that some fluid may have found it's way to the run-in on the underside. For 99% of the time, the record is sufficiently dry to re-sleeve immediately, but I just leave it horizontally on a little stand that I have, for the duration of the next clean. I don't doubt that the more recent cleaning method is better than when I first bought the machine, but that's because I have gained experience along the way.

That's funny, because your process is almost identical to mine, except that I scrub (terrible word!) after distributing the fluid and before the soak. After the soak, I have a few more sweeps with the brush before vac. However, you don't say if you use enzyme or alcohol based fluid, which makes a difference.

Anyway, you've nailed it (and again, we agree) when you say '99% of the time' it's SUFFICIENTLY dry to sleeve. As common sense backed by physics rules out total drying by vac. alone, I much prefer to sleeve completely dry records. Besides, you still set out your cleaned record for evaporation; whether on a separate stand or on the platter is irrelevant.

As I've cleaned thousands of sides on my 16.5 using almost identical methods as you (except possibly for the fluid), I'm puzzled that our experiences are so different, as you say. Yes, I used to get overflow just under the record when having a bit too much at the edge and had to use a tissue if this was the last side to be cleaned, practice makes perfect on that one ! ;)
 


advertisement


Back
Top