High Mag Vinyl Pics

So can you take any requests? Like say, showing the effects of using tap water instead of purified water for the rinse?

 

Oh, man! It would be great if you could, as others have suggested, photograph records which have been cleaned by various methods, say: Alcohol solutions; Vacuum cleaning machines; Wood glue, etc.
Could you, could you?
C'mon... please?

 

Awesome pics! I don't know exactly what my VPI vacuum actually does but, I do notice a considerable difference in sound quality ie less pops clicks and overall noise. I wish I had a couple of microscopes so I could see the difference!

 

These are crazy to look at. Thanks for sharing!

 

Great pics. It would seem (with enough lunch hours, hehe) that you could definitively come up with the answer that thousands of us have been looking for and debating for years - the best way to clean vinyl. Every vinyl cleaning solution or apparatus should include before and after photos as thorough as these.

Perhaps depending on whether or not you add any more photos to the thread - in the interest of future "searches" - you might want to consider extending out the Mag in the thread title. Just a thought.
.

 

Maybe you could get a fat research grant from the World Audiophile Organization.

 

koptapad, thank you for the wonderful pictures, and hello from a fellow Minnesotan.

I would agree that the simple cleaning process you use seems to be pretty darn effective.... perhaps we are all a bit misguided in how irascible the dirt on LPs can be. What's left over seems to be artifacts of the pressing process more than embedded dirt.

 

I was not trying to prove anything about cleaning. I was just interested in what I was doing about cleaning because I am getting back into vinyl. I always wondered what the grooves looked like anyway at high mag. I am new at this really, I have a cheap TT and cartridge. BUT, I am convincing my wife that doing needle drops of my old lps is cheaper than buying the new CDs. I already have the recording setup (RME Fireface 800/Sonar 6PE).This way I can justify buying a new TT!

 

I am willing to bet that photos after ultrasonics will show a difference, I swear by my ultrasonic cleaner

 

Never, never, never (outside of infidelity) has a greater untruth been foisted upon the opposite sex! When I add up the cost of the turntable, phono stage, USB soundcard, and Audition software, it seems that I'll never get that money back out of my 'savings'. I'd have to buy over 250 lps and save $5 each over the equivalent cd purchase to make back the cost of the rig.

But that is not the story that the wife gets......

 

Your wish is my command!

Found these SEM images of a stylus before and after cleaning on a UK site flogging vinyl cleaning equipment:

http://www.vinylcare.co.uk/stylus_cleaner.htm
(scroll down to the bottom of the page, images can be enlarged by clicking).

BTW, the stylus cleaner that he's selling - is this the fabled "Magic Eraser" that I hear so much about?

 

Many thanks for those excellent shots.

 

Sure looks like it.

 

Holy cripes, those are some amazing photos!!!

A "must see" for those who don't believe in wet cleaning, or believe that... the stylus will clean the LP.

 

There are those of us that have the TT and phono stage in place because they are are most important source components in our systems, so they are not an additional cost. The only extra cost for the needle drop capability was a stand alone CD burner.

 

James, Great photos. I assume you did these at work since you are a chemist and most folks do not have an SEM in their basement. I wish I still spent time in the lab in my job, but all I deal with today is the business end of stuff, no more fun stuff like R&D for me.

I hope that if I ever get to retire I can get a stereozoom microscope (not a Nikkon, will not be able to afford that good of one) and use it to inspect records.

 

Pbthal, what ultrasonic cleaner? There was a concept one a year back or so, didn't know there was any 'real' ultrasonics out there.

 

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=103427

 

Could we get a shot of the stylus in the groove?

 

I don't think the turntable will fit under the scope. Unless what you're asking is that he hold his stylus in the groove, at the proper angle, whilst focusing the massive beast.

Yeah sure, go ahead. I'd be interested in that shot too!!

 

It makes a huge difference. I am a Nitty Gritty guy but the VPI cleans about as well as long as you only look at one side of the Lp at a time ;-).

They way that they work is that they use a very good record cleaning solution and scrub the record in a similar manner as seen here in the "dish bath" exercise, but it goes a step further. This is the really important step as it then vacuums off the fluid. The images that we see here are quite clean as far as a before and after but it doesn't show a very broad section of the groove and there are plenty of smaller particles that cannot be removed with a "rinse". What happens with the rinse method is that the big stuff is washed away (yeah!) as clearly seen here but then the very smallest particles are left suspended in the fluid that is retained on the surface of the Lp groove as a film. The water film then evaporates, leaving the fine particles behind, still in the groove but probably at various different locations from where they originated. The vacuum process really solves this as it removes the water/debris solution film from the record before the water evaporates. This gets the record as clean as is possible. I suspect the only thing that could improve that method would be the use of better chemicals to do the cleaning, the mechanics of it all is fairly straight forward.

The photos here are awesome in their detail. You can't see that even with a really good optical scope, but you can hear the difference it makes very easily. I am sure that before and after photos of that process would be just as revealing.

Thanks again Captain Koptapad!
-Bill

 

These photos are not loading for me. The SEM photos are great though.
Thanks again! Once again, you are Da Man!
-Bill

 

Koptapad,

Can you use the SEM on my paycheck? It has shrunk lately and I need more cash to buy vinyl.

 

All I can say is WOW! Again, very very cool pics!