How to clean mold/mildew off of LPs?

I recently acquired a lot of about 100 lps from the 70s for free, because they had water and mold damage from sitting on a garage floor which got wet. (I see this pretty often here in western Oregon.)

The damage ranges from records in which innersleeve became soaked and fused onto the record, to ones in which the outer sleeve got slightly damaged but the record itself is fine. Many of them have just some mold dust or dried water droplet marks.

Being on a limited budget and mostly interested in listening (as opposed to collecting) makes it worth it to me to try to rescue some of these that aren't too far gone- there are some nice titles including a number of Beatles rainbow label reissues, one Beatles Parlophone, several early Rolling Stones titles, most of the early Dylan catalog, two nice Zeppelin lps, etc.

Are there any cleaning fluids that are particularly suited to removing mold? Should I try cleaning them with tap water 1st? I plan to buy a Spin Clean machine soon, and perhaps pair it with the KAB system to use a vacuum cleaner.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

 

I'd just stick with the Spin Clean or at least start with that. I can't say I've cleaned seriously ultra-moldy records but I've taken some records that weren't scratched but had a thick layer of dust and whatnot on it and the Spin Clean plus setting them on lint-free towels for a few minutes on each side works every time. The submerging along with the brushes does a lot in my experience. Sounds like you would probably want to mail order some nice inner sleeves too.

 

I know there's controversy about using it (I believe it's perfectly vinyl safe), but I recommend distilled water mixed 1:1 with 91% (or greater) isopropyl alcohol applied with a cotton facial makeup square. Follow this with a good rinse with distilled water. If you don't have record cleaning brushes, use cotton squares for the rinse too. Dry with a soft microfiber cloth and allow to completely air dry before playing or putting in sleeves. Honestly, this has worked wonders for me on some pretty nasty looking records. Short of getting a RCM, this will help a lot. PM me if you have any more questions.

 

Search through this forum for "wood glue."

Clean them with tap water, let dry and then do a wood glue cleaning. It's absolutely THE most effective thing I've found for removing mold residue.

The problem with mold is that it extrudes "roots" into the crevices of the grooves. You can get a mold-damaged record looking cosmetically fine, but still have a "swishing" sound as the stylus tracks through the infected areas.

Wood glue will yank that stuff right out. The only noise you'll have left will be from prior physical damage.

 

I actually had a similar situation to the OP last month - trashed jackets due to water damage, but generally pristine LP's. I washed the LP's that had mold / mildew in my slop sink (soap and water and a quick dry) which then followed up with wood glue to really get into the grooves. I think it worked well. My sink is next to my garage, so they didn't go into the house into they were clean and the wood glue had dried. The jackets were not permitted in my house.

 

I would throw away all the outer covers or water-damaged paper stuff. I'm very paranoid about mold growing in there. Toss those out!

I had a few heavily water-damaged records I picked up at thrift stores, including a couple where the outer sleeve fused with the record and tore apart, stuck into the grooves.

I used my normal wet dunk method, using Tergitol solution and a distilled water rinse. I soaked them for a minute or so, and it peeled right out. Scrubbed really good with the MOFI brush to get rid of the mold and such that grew in the grooves on some of them, and those suckers came out brand new. I would be aggressive with the soaking and scrubbing, IMO, and then though I haven't tried wood glue yet, that would be plan B after for stuff that's really bad.

 

I use Mobile Fidelity's Enzyme Cleaner which works well.

 

Thanks for the tips folks.

There are also a number of lps that I don't care about so they can serve as test dummies while me learning curve is steep. E.g., I'm pretty sure I saw an Alvin and Chipmunks title in the mix..

 

I've been cleaning a bunch of old records that I got a a large lot when an antique store closed in my town. A few boxes had been stored on the ground in a damp garage so many were moldy like yours.

The best thing I've used is this: http://www.amazon.com/Sporicidin-En...TF8&qid=1347483385&sr=8-2&keywords=sporicidin

$35 for a 32oz bottle of concentrate and makes 16 gallons worth of cleaner.

I follow up with another wash using my good Audio Intelligent cleaning fluids if the record is in nice condition or a 99% isopropyl alcohol / distilled water mix if the record isn't in great shape.

 

Bingo. Yep, the sleeves have to go.

The wood glue really is the thing. People can pre-clean with whatever they want, but finishing with wood glue is key. And I'm bringing 7 years experience as a record store manager to the table when I say this. I've attempted cleaning moldy records with everything under the sun. The only thing that really finishes the job is wood glue.

 

SPIN CLEAN FOR $79. Great Investment for just such a task. I hope to buy a VPI soon, but I would still clean them first with the SpinClean just to get most of the garbage out of the grooves. Great for the first clean of garage sale or the used record bin lps.

 

Spin Clean is an excellent product but you really need an enzyme cleaner to really remove it. The chemicals in Spin Clean are not strong enough. You could do a Spin Clean and then wipe down with the enzyme cleaner if you are on a budget.

 

http://www.dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=977

"When I said that some old records were dangerous, I meant it. It’s not hyperbole. Water and paper, plus time, equals mold. The kind of mold that makes my skin break out, and airways to contract. Of course, if it’s a good record, I’m still going to risk the health consequences. The mold can be denatured with good ole’ bleach. The jacket is already toast once it’s been wet enough to grow mold. So don’t worry about devaluing the record even more. As an aside, bleach isn’t very useful in killing mold on drywall, wood, etc.. It’s good enough for a record jacket though. Just put enough bleach on the moldy area to saturate it, and then let it soak in and dry. It works for me. Some fancy mold remediator would have a more expensive solution. If you have a functioning central air conditioning system, or you live in a dry climate, don’t worry about the mold spores polluting your house. They are already there. It takes certain growing conditions for them to lay down roots and cause mayhem. The spores, while causing allergic reactions, are commonly found all around us, and not to be treated like plutonium or the bubonic plague. Don’t use bleach on the vinyl, just the paper! Bleach is probably the most caustic agent in your house.

So, this is a worst case scenario: a record that might have mold on its surface. I’ve had more than one, and the normal cleaning solutions were mostly ineffective. My assumption was that they had permanently bonded to the vinyl. Not so fast! If the record is otherwise an unusable turd, then why not experiment! Excelsior!!! I went through several concoctions; some using powerful wetting agents/surfactants (treat them with caution); others using various amounts of various alcohols (ethanol, isopropanol, denatured and natural); various home cleaning agents (mostly doing more harm than good). Still, you can’t make an unlistenable record that much more unlistenable. I have found two solutions for extremely dirty records, up to ones with mold (the biological mold, not the chemical compound).

Concoction number one: Folex and Everclear. I was first exposed to Folex when I asked for a suggestion on carpet cleaning fluid at Lowe’s; I haven’t seen it anywhere else. Because I have cats, there was a constant need for carpet cleaning. Most cleaning products have too many noxious chemicals, and leave behind residues that make the carpet feel dirtier, and perhaps sticky. Folex, I was told, was different, and better. It comes in a nondescript bottle, looking more like the cleaning fluid your janitor would use. That’s not a bad thing—consumer products are often fancy packages with crap inside. The price was good and I took it home. The liquid inside had very little smell (hurrah!), and a slight pink hue. Application was straight forward and it did a better job than anything else I tried. Wanting to know what magic lurked in the fluid, I called up Folex, apparently a small company, and wound up talking to the president or owner. There was nothing “space-age” in the liquid: just a proprietary blending of commonly available surfactants and filtered water. Wow. It’s soapy water, but without sudsing agents and perfumes. It’s just what you need to clean and nothing more. Before you try to make your own “cheap” version, be forewarned. The minimum purchase on some of the chemicals they might be using is 50 gallon drums.

I first tried the Folex, undiluted, on a ‘70s rock pressing, and the results were good, but not without issues. It left behind an unseen, but audible, residue. I could get the residue off with my normal cleaning fluids, or it sounded that way. As far as I know, plain distilled water should be a good rinse for something like Folex, my assumption being that the chemicals are all water loving). I still didn’t get miracle results on the worst sounding records. I tried watering it down, but got less cleaning. The next step was to mix fluids, and I found some magic with a 50/50 mix of Everclear and Folex. While it still needed to be rinsed with my normal cleaners, there wasn’t as much soap residue, and the cleaning action of the fluid removed tough oils and organics that my normal fluids wouldn’t touch. (Read with care, please. -Pub.) Please keep in mind that I am not recommending this as your regular cleaning fluid. It’s much too powerful for a pressing that just has some dust and some residues from the pressing plant. While I didn’t see or hear vinyl damage, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that one of the chemicals, or the Everclear, might react negatively with some vinyl formulations. I haven’t done triple blind placebo test with a scanning electron microscope of multiple identical factory fresh pressings. My experience has been mostly positive. However, there was still a few records that not even Folex and Everclear could clean.

Concoction number two is the original cleaner and antiseptic: vinegar. Yes, vinegar. “Distilled white vinegar,” to be exact. You wouldn’t believe how good it is for cleaning a glass-top range, or getting cat vomit out of carpet, or oil out of fabric. It’s like magic. I was told about the powerful cleaning properties of vinegar by someone who ran a carpet store. I was pushed to using vinegar on a pressing that had been attacked by mold. I did a three-step cleaning process using my Folex/Everclear concoction, the two Record Research Labs cleaners, and a VPI 17. I also used the VPI’s cleaning brush to agitate the Folex/Everclear. After five minutes of cleaning a side, I’d say 85% of the gunk was still on the record.

I thought this was a good time to try vinegar. I used undiluted vinegar and a stylus cleaning brush, going with the grooves obviously. It got 100% of the crap off the record. I followed up with a good rinse, of course. Between the first significant cleaning, and the vinegar cleaning, I put the record on the turntable to see if it was playable. Prior to cleaning it would play, but the section that had the mold had a very prominent “scrunch” and visibly deflected the stylus of my Shure V15. Not good. After the cleaning, the “scrunch” was gone, and it tracked like it was never there. Of course, the record was a rare jazz record, not a 99 cent record that could, and should, be immediately tossed in the trash. Even after the cleaning, there were tics and pops and background noise from the dicey vinyl formula. But, using the correct cartridge, playback EQ and the mono switch, the record was very pleasurable. Otherwise, it would have been thrown away had the mold issue not been resolved. I tried cleaning a few “normal” pressings from the ‘60s and ‘70s and couldn’t tell if the vinegar was hurting or helping. I’d reserve its use for extreme cases. Vinegar is acidic and very probably will leach plasticizers out of the vinyl with prolonged exposure. On the other hand, a record doesn’t sound very good when it’s been thrown in the trash. This is definitely something to try for otherwise awful disks.

A word about rinsing: I found that a very affordable rinse, one readily available to you, is “Sterile Water for Irrigation USP.

 

I wish I'd known that in the 70s. My parent's house didn't have central heating back then and my LPs often suffered from mould that I could never get properly sorted!

 

Ibis, you'll probably appreciate this: The wood glue technique was invented by BBC technicians to clean rare old LPs in their vaults!

 

George Merrill says his "GEM Dandy" cleaning system is able to cope with problems like that...although they'll probably need an enzymatic cleaner to kill off the mold spores.

 

I aquired a bunch of decent looking but actually black mold infected LPs.
After realizing this, i would say IF I had known, I never would have purchased them, even at the dirt cheap price i paid.
Just not worth it.
Keeping them sealed up is the best solution. Or just tossing them out.
I threw out most of them BTW.
Now if I see even the slightest hint an Lp has any sort of mold problem, i never buy it, no matter what.

 

Buggtussel Vinyl-Zyme Gold came with my Loricraft RCM. It's formulated for mold and bacteria imbedded in the grooves. Highly recommended

 

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=7613107&postcount=35

 

Lots of good advice from the posters above, but it's important to remember that mold is just part of the problem. LP's contaminated by water in a flood will have all kinds of other polutants on them, so you're going to need a range of cleaners and tools to tackle the problem. Personally I'd try this method.

1. Rinse the LP under a gentle stream of warm running water. A kitchen or bathroom mixer tap is perfect.

2. Wash the LP using an LP brush (I use the one from a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine) and a mild solution of dish washing detergent, rinse well and allow to air dry.

3. Next deal with the mold, the wood glue method mentioned above is your best bet here.

4. Vacuum clean the LP using a strong solution of Isopropol Alcohol and water (70/30) and rinse with distilled water.

5. Vacuum clean the LP using an enzyme cleaner (I like audio intellegent enzyme cleaner) and rinse with distilled water.

6. Vacuum clean the LP using a cleaning solution of your choice (I use L'Art Du Son) or a mild solution of Isopropol Alcohol and water (10/90).

7. Treat with Last LP preservative and place in a nice new poly sleve.


It is important to change the brushes used and if possible the mat and suction tube of your cleaning machine at every stage and never allow any moisture on to the LP label. This process may sound a bit much, but your LP will be cleaner than when it left the pressing plant and you can be sure it won't damage your stylus or other LP's.

 

I have never concerned myself with moisture touching the label. Unless you are a serious collector, it's really not an issue. I always do a complete bath, and 99% of the time have absolutely no issues whatsoever with any effects to the label. I think most people who seriously fret about moisture touching the labels have never actually tried it out, and are being a little overly-anal about it. Though, these are LPs we're talking about, so I guess we're all being overly-anal!

 

Being overly anal is half the fun! It's not moisture that causes the problems with labels, distilled water rarely causes any problems, it's the alcohol and chemical cleaners you have to watch out for.

 

Toss all the stinky covers away..outside in the bin.
Keep the odd album cover if its not too bad and stick
it in a stiff PVC protective sleeve so that it does not touch any of your other records.
Clean all the vinyl/both sides with either washing up liquid
(don't forget to rinse),
or 99% Iso.... avoid the lables.

 

RTI-pressed labels are the worst. Do not get those wet in any way.

 

Bleach can kill virtually every species of indoor mold that it comes into contact with, along with its spores, leaving a surface sanitized and resistant to future mold growth. Also vinegar is a mild acid which can kill 82% of mold species. However it also has the advantages of being natural and safe. Vinegar is non-toxic and doesn't give off dangerous fumes like bleach does.