The bath is heated--correct? It could be that the bath heater has evaporated off the alcohol to the point that it no longer helps wet the vinyl. Maybe you need to add more alcohol to replace what has evaporated. When I get my machine (today I hope) I will see how strong the freshly made bath smells of alcohol. Hardly an accurate measurement of the concentration, but maybe in a month I'll be able to notice less alcohol aroma, and that would be an indication of evaporation. Perhaps you could replace the bath in your machine with a fresh mix and see if the wetting improves, and if the alcohol aroma is stronger than you observe now. Is there a recommendation in the manual on how long the bath can remain in the machine? Are we supposed to drain it off into bottles for prolonged storage?
The "brushes" are just foam rubber. It squeegees the LP as it rotates. So when you pull an LP out only the bottom 1/3 will be wet.
Did everyone send their warranty card off within the 15 days? I totally forgot to do it and was going to fill it out tonight and mail it in the morning until I read it has to be mailed to them within 15 days....hopefully I don't run into any issues.
BTW, the card is not legally necessary. [it is too late to edit the above post] I bought some thin wall tubing for my filter yesterday. Today I will try it out. I expect to have to put in a couple of quarts of fluid after the pump and filter are primed.
I bought the machine last month. I cleaned 100 vinyls. 3 bottles of surfactant. In my opinion: ultrasonic cleaning works. Kirmuss surfactant system don't work, The brush is not clean after application, and the next application shows more paste tooth. Everybody can see this malfunction.
Kirmuss alone may not be the most effective way to clean LPs, for many of the reasons noted in this thread. Including the Kirmuss as part of a procedure chain leads to much improved results. Pre scrub. US clean. Rinse. Vac dry. I use a Spin Clean to pre scrub all LPs. Then a US bath using "rushton's" cleaning formula. The a distilled water rinse. Then a vacuum dry using a Nitty Gritty Machine. I can clean 20-25 LPs in a few hours. I can US clean 4 LPs at time. I use a 15 min cycle at 0.3 RPM.....5 rev in 15 min. My final results are better than just using each step as a discrete cleaning method. IE SC does a great job and a cleaning session results in a lot of effluent in the SC tank. BUT there is effluent in the US tank after a subsequent US clean, meaning the SC alone left some dirt behind. A rinse and vac dry removes whatever is left.
I say “why not?” Distilled water is dirt cheap. As is small amounts of alcohol. For the $3 or so, I think the clean solution is worth it.
Got it. I realize now that I had read the post too quickly and thought he had decided to "dump"/ get rid of his Kirmuss after cleaning only 30 records!
Mines up and running. Really cool machine. The white paste is coming off my oldest records. Weird looking. Some records take more than two ten minute cycles. Can't figure out why my needles gets so dirty. I think it's getting stuff out that's been there 40 plus years. Not very loud either.
Still figuring out the routine. Some of these old records don't want to give up the dirt. Even after 20 plus minutes.
This machine is bizarre. Seems to make some records sound worse. Like all this crap has been loosened up and has somehow stayed on the record. Like digital, it will no doubt be another twenty years before they figure this out. Makes you appreciate digital for what it is. Low fi, but convenient as all hell. About time to buy a big flat screen and hook it up and put the vinyl back in storage.
I try not to contradict any of the positions taken by Kirmuss, let alone suggest that you do something with his unit that doesn't follow his strictures lest you void the warranty, but the basic premise of ultrasonic cleaning- whether it is DIY or a fancy unit-- is basically the same- use cavitation effect to loosen (and hopefully remove) the contamination. Using a surfactant of some sort enhances cavitation effect. I have not used the Kirmuss machine and thus have not followed his methodology; my experience with ultrasonic is that it is good, sometimes great, in cleaning records, but is not a complete solution for dirty records. I've found my best results to come from a combination of more conventional cleaning, using a generally available record cleaning fluid, rinse steps using some sort of pure water and ultrasonic (I have a pretty serious vacuum machine but you don't need that to effectively clean a record). I vary the combination of methods as needed. My suspicion is that you aren't getting the stuff off the record. You should probably speak with Kirmuss (because he may have a view and I don't want my view to be read as undermining his-- he is marketing a product and I'm not-- I'm just someone who has done a lot of record cleaning using ultrasonic as one step). I also have no experience with the surfactant/fluid he sells. If you can, try cleaning out the bath, and just use distilled water without his fluid. And, if you have a conventional vacuum machine of some type, with a decent cleaning fluid (I prefer AIVS #15 but there are others), use that to try to get the record clean, vacuum, rinse and give it a go in the ultrasonic without his fluid. See what happens.
It worked good on dirty older records. With new ones it turns a dozen pops into hundreds or thousands. I get the impressions all these audio guys are given the Audio Desk for free and so it goes. For 3.5k they should come out perfect. You will never see cassette or reel to reel promoted because there is no ad money. Maybe the water is just dirty. Probably effects the ultrasonic efficacy. Gonna try again in the AM.