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Vinyl brush for wet cleaning..

AdamWysokinski

AdamWysokinski

Mmm... music...
Osage looks fine, but it's a bit expensive (damn it, it's just a piece of wood with some nylon bristles).. any reasonably priced alternatives?

Cheers, Adam
 
I am also looking out for a replacement brush for my VPI and would be interested in what is available. Must google that Osage, as I haven't come across that one.
 
The one supplied by keith Monks is presumably available as a spare .... mine is 20 years old and still in good fettle. Its a utilitarian nylon handled item with no boutique pretentions
 
sq225917 said:
The Mofi brush is good if you are a soaker and not a scrubber.
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Some people could resemble that remark ! Yup, I think the Mofi is one of the 'pointy filament' ones.

What if a soaker AND a scrubber thee be? Presumably the hair assembly is too fine to hold firmly against the record.
 
Back in my hi-fi retail days we used to pull the central bristle brush out of a Cecil Watts 'The PARASTAT'.

IIRC, these had much finer bristles than those that VPI provided at the time, and so did a better job of it.

Craig
 
I am not convinced that the VPI-supplied and other similar brushes work well. The bristles are too thick to get into the grooves and really only serve to spread the cleaning fluid around. For this purpose, any brush that works may be used. Further, more worryingly, the hard bristles tend to leave fine scratch marks on the surface of the vinyl (usually not audible, but not acceptable if you have valuable records).

I've now switched to the Mint brush which seems to work equally well if not better. It is a simple homemade piece of acrylic with a velvet strip affixed to its edge. The fibers may be fine enough to pick up dirt in the grooves. Who knows? But it works.

http://www.mintlp.com/brush.htm
 
When I first bought an RCM a few years ago I took the advice of our leader who advocated the use of "Paint Pads" as the speader and cleaner, I have been using them with no ill effects since. I am sure that if any of you have bought "cleaned" records from Tony they would have been cleaned in this manner.

Hockmans suggestion is a similar solution to the Oki Nokki cleaner brush which is simply a strip of velvet on a wooden handle, which I also find works quite well.
 
hockman said:
I am not convinced that the VPI-supplied and other similar brushes work well. The bristles are too thick to get into the grooves and really only serve to spread the cleaning fluid around. For this purpose, any brush that works may be used. Further, more worryingly, the hard bristles tend to leave fine scratch marks on the surface of the vinyl (usually not audible, but not acceptable if you have valuable records).


You have voiced what I have been suspicious of for quite a while now. One would assume that the brush supplied with a quality RCM (like VPI) is not just an afterthought. Certainly £40 is not an afterthought price !!!

So far, the MOFI and Osage seem to be better designed to

a) get down into the grooves during a good scrub, and

b) be durable enough to both spread AND scrub.

However, my 4 inch VPI (for the 16.5) is the correct size, but others tend to be longer, though I can't see why. Why isn't (hifi) life simple?
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No brush will actually get down into the grooves, they are way to small, the best you can hope for is that the action of passing the brush will cause the fluid to circulate lifting the muck. I that respect I think the extended surface area of the mofi brush is a winner.
 
The brush that came with my Loricraft looks very much like the Osage, it seems line. I often use a Clearaudio brush, I feel this works better and it sucks up less fluid, useful if you're only cleaning 1 or 2 records. The Clearaudio is expensive for what you get. The MOFI looks best to me, I'll get one sometime soon.
 
Sounds as though the Manual Parastat would have made for the perfect RCM fluid application tool in the first place...

The Manual Parastat incorporates the essential requirements for record cleaning and maintenance in a comprehensive and convenient form.

It has a central hand made brush supported by two velvet covered rubber pads.

The brush is closely packed with over 30,000, 0.006" diameter pure nylon bristles finely pointed to an average tip radius of 0.00025" and firm enough to probe down into the groove without harming the record in any way.

The short pile plush of the pads has a similar filament radius and will collect all dirt, dust and pollution dislodged by the brush.

Static control is provided by the use of a new formula Parostatik antistatic fluid, a free flowing non-toxic liquid which, when used as directed, cannot leave any kind of film or deposit in the record grooves other than a molecular trace of no physical significance.
Click to expand...

Craig
 
sq225917 said:
1/8th of a mm isn't going anywhere into your grooves...
Click to expand...

Never mind the shaft dimensions, a tip radius of 0.00025in. (.25mil) is smaller than the minor radius of most styli, let alone the maximum radii of any.

It should be remembered that Cecil Watts was one of the pioneering engineers of the stereo age and held a number of patents relating to the manufacture of both 78 and LP records.

Craig
 
It's a tip radius, so its as wide as it is deep, it's still not cleaning the groove, no brush will. It's just the action of dragging water through that cleans.
 
Can I deduce from the above that there are no brushes with hairs/filaments capable of emulating a stylus in penetrating the grooves?

I find this hard to believe in this age of microscopic manufacturing techniques.
 
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