Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records

I found that debris was forming on the stylus - and this is consistent with what Harold Weiler (of Shure) addressed over 50 years ago and that I quoted in the opening of Section VI. I also found that I was getting into this do-loop, that in order to get decent playback, I had to use the brush with the liquid, if I didn't, then playback was compromised. To me that was a big red flag, something was not right. But, let me stress that this was my experience, and I was using the Ortofon 2M Black with the Shibata stylus.

 

Thanks. I'm using an Ortofon 2M Bronze. I religiously clean my stylus with the Discwasher stylus brush, and never ever see anything on it. Doesn't seem to make a bit of difference, but I understand that what I can see and what's there are two different things. That said, I've never in forty years (more like fifty, actually; I got my first record player when I was 10) had the impression that anything at all was accumulating on my stylus (even in the old days when I was using much less good cartridges and styli--and never cleaning anything, ever).

But your remark about "decent playback" puzzles me. If you were routinely cleaning your records before play (presumably) with a Dishwasher-like brush and liquid system, then how would you know that something was subpar sound-wise if you didn't clean them--if you're always cleaning them? Also, I hear no difference between a well-kept clean record (in a casual sense) that, in a moment of laziness, I might (very rarely) play without using the Dishwasher brush on it first maybe because I had played it recently and cleaned it. You make it sound like you were hearing audibly degraded sound if you didn't always clean your records with such a system when you were using that system, as if the system was required to get normal sound. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean. And again--please understand that I'm not trying to be difficult, just really trying to understand here. I really did find the paper very informative!

 

When I say playback was compromised, there was noise and distortion, and I noticed this on piano pieces and trumpets; especially with albums that were in shall we say heavy rotation. The Shibata stylus is notorious for being sensitive to setup and noise, From my posts, you should have seen that I also have a Soundsmith Carmen and it is very forgiving. But, the Ortofon Shibata and the Soundsmith Paua dig for the details - good and bad. Also, note that I started using a UV light and I saw that I was not cleaning - mostly I was just moving the dust around. And, I had some CDs of the same LP versions, and I was not getting the experience I was expecting from the LP. Also, I was purchasing some new old stock and used albums (record store) and the brush and fluid was not doing it. My final conclusion was that I was not cleaning the album with the brush. Once I started a full wet cleaning on all albums, I did not know what I was missing - its the old adage - You do not know what you do not know. I can wet clean and dry a record in about 6 minutes, and once clean as I said I use no brush - not required; and now repeat play is as good as the first.

 

Summary?

 

Not sure the intent of the post - of what are you asking to be summarized? If it is the exchange with CMT, that has been a dialogue between his experience and my experience; nothing more. Each of us our has own expectations, desires, and our own definition (guided by many variables) of what is good enough. If someone is content/satisfied with their system/their experience who am I to judge. I will leave CMT with this - as an alternative to the DC4 fluid, the ILFORD-ILFOTO diluted per the manufacture recommendation of 1 part to 200 parts water should work fine; 1-2-drops/1 ounce of DIW should do it - it will make a good wetting solution (not a great cleaner) that will not leave much residue behind when applied/used with a brush.

Otherwise, when I got back into vinyl 5 years ago, as the paper Forward said, my retry was less than stellar. My 1st 2 new albums were Miles David Kind of Blue and Joni Mitchell Blue, and upon the first playback - compared to the digital setup I had (Wadia DAC/Krell Transport), I was the one who was blue with disappointment. But, I was disillusioned with digital (story for another day) and just set my mind that I was going to fix this. It took some time reworking the cartridge setup, working through the platter bearing grounding. Grounding to the preamp did not work, I had to ground all the way back to the wall outlet. It took a few tries to get the platter mat right - I ended up with a leather remnant from a craft store that is only 1-mm thick that cut easily and cleanly and it works great (skin side down/suede side up); the suede side is very dense so it does not shed, and it is thin enough not to damp the record, but couples completely to the record. There may be some similarity to this well reviewed leather mat that is no longer available - 6moons.com audio reviews: Jean Hiraga TTM-P01 turntable mat . Cleaning became another challenge, and the paper details that outcome. I still have digital, you cannot argue the convivence or the low cost of something decent, but I am done with any major 'investments'. But, I will say that today, my vinyl playback is as quiet as digital and aurally exceeds it - soundstage beyond the speaker boundaries, pristine highs - no distortion, trumpets pure of tone, no listener fatigue - I can listen for hours; and on a slow piano piece the notes just hang in the air and then gently decay.

 

This is a great thread.

I often find reports of what didn't work more valuable, or at least as valuable, as what did work.

 

Neil’s paper is very interesting and thoroughly researched. I have found that mild surfactant detergents, such as those recommended by Neil, had little effect on surface noise for the 40+ years old jazz and blues records I get from second hand shops. So, a few years ago, I did my own research.

I am a chartered chemist who worked in the food industry for many years and have a lot of experience of cleaning food processing equipment. First you need to understand the dirt. For an old record, this will be particulate matter bound to the vinyl by a sticky mix of grease, nicotine, etc. To make matters worse, oils and greases oxidise over time to form gums that are very difficult to remove. To clean the record, the gummy mix has to be washed away, taking the particles with it. As the diameter of the bristles on a cleaning brush, such as my SRM (as used on Moth cleaning machines) is bigger than the width of the grooves, the brush does little to actually remove dirt from inside the grooves. This means that the cleaning agent has to be sufficiently powerful to dissolve the gummy mix.

To find out what works I did a simple experiment. To my shame, the tops of my kitchen cupboards are seldom cleaned. They are coated with dust bound to the surface by a horrible gummy mix of oxidized fat (I like fried food and frying produces an aerosol of fat and food particles, smoke, etc). This was my test bed. If a cleaning agent could dissolve this dirt, it would clean even the dirtiest record. Most cleaning agents work best when hot – try doing the washing-up with cold water – but this is not an option for records.

I tested the following: dishwashing detergent (a mild surfactant, neat and diluted), ethanol (methylated spirits), IPA (isopropyl alcohol), “VinylClear” spray record cleaner, white spirit (turps), Mr Muscle Kitchen Cleaner, Mr Muscle oven cleaner. The dishwashing detergent and meths had little effect, the solvent cleaners (IPA, VC, turps) did dissolve the dirt but quickly evaporated leaving a sticky film. By far the best was the oven cleaner, which is not surprising because it is based on caustic soda (lye), which dissolves, fats, greases, protein, etc. Unlike surfactants, caustic actually dissolves the substances that cause the particles to stick to the vinyl. If this doesn’t clean it, nothing will.

Then I googled corrosion tables to see if caustic soda attacks plasticized PVC. It doesn’t - PVC (plasticized and unplasticised) is completely resistant to cold caustic at any concentration. I have use MrM oven cleaner to clean many records, even new ones. No effect on sound quality apart from eliminating crackles. The method is very simple. I have a jig to support the record horizontal. I spray a blob of MrM onto a damp sponge and work it into the grooves on one side. The great thing about MrM is that it is a foam that does not run. Turn the record over and repeat. Then stack the record and do the next one. After about 5-10 minutes take the first record and clean it with a wet SRM brush both sides before rinsing it under a flowing tap of warm water. Then dry with a lint-free cotton cloth (an old vest/undershirt that has been washed many times). I never use microfibre because it leaves a bird’s nest of fibres on the stylus. I don’t bother with distilled water as the cloth removes all residues. Simple and virtually zero cost.

 

Long article, but will definitely take a read later on.

 

Thanks for this. Just curious. Is Kodak Photoflo basically the same stuff? Being a photographer with a still-working, old-fashioned, wet darkroom, I have Photoflo immediately at hand.
Thanks

 

Kodak Photoflo is very different - see Section VII of the paper, I discuss both the ILFORD and Kodak solutions.

 

Thanks. I must have missed that. Will re-read that section.
[Edit. Re-read that part. It was right there in black and white. Apologies for asking a question already answered. There is a lot in your paper to digest! ]

 

So, if you're willing to indulge one more question: Just to confirm, I'm understanding you to say then that, in your opinion, Ilford-Ilfotol diluted to the maker's suggested dilution in distilled water is likely to be a safe, effective* replacement for the old D4 Discwasher solution, if I care to simply continue to use my Discwasher. Correct? *With the understanding that it's not a cleaner in the sense that you are talking about in the paper.

About that, however, you remark, that it is "not a great cleaner." When I use the Discwasher on records, though, it clearly picks up dust and debris, as you can see it on the pad after cleaning. It makes records quieter. Am I not cleaning my record? (Again, understanding that it's not the kind of thorough cleaning that you are discussing in the paper).

Thanks

 

Thanks, Chris for an interesting approach that I am definitely going to try and...
...WAIT A MINUTE!
Did you say you eat a lot of fried food? Call the police (LOL).
On a more serious note, did you check to see if MrM would attack plasticizer or any of the other chemicals in the vinyl coumpound? Neil lists these on p 54ff.

 

Hi AudioAddict. Thanks for your reply.

A breakfast isn't a breakfast unless it's seen a frying pan! Grilling is for wimps. My wife complains I make her kitchen greasy. But then wives complain a lot.

The best plastics corrosion chart I've seen it this [ https://kuhnke.kendrion.com/attachment/ICS/ics_pdf_brochure/ics_pdf_chemical-resistance-2015_en.pdf ]. It refers to hard and soft PVC. I assume the latter is the plasticised PVC used for records. Both are unaffected by lye. The plasticisers will be incorporated into the matrix and, although plastic formulations may differ, I imagine the corrosion resistance of the PVC itself will predominate. I've never seen any evidence of a problem being caused by MrM.

 

CMT, you are cleaning the record of particulate, and for how you are using the brush, what you want is a wetting agent. But to remove other soils, organic films, heavy fingerprints, you need higher concentration to develop the surfactant micelles (as I discuss Section VII) that are what do a lot of the cleaning. But, if you work with a higher concentration and only a single application brush then you risk leaving more residue from the cleaner than you are removing.

 

ChrisWoo, I did a quick check, and assuming you are talking about Mr. Muscle http://www.futures-supplies.co.uk/downloads/007.047OR-SC_Johnson_Mr_Muscle_Oven_Cleaner_MSDS.pdf, the MSDS shows it as an strong alkaline cleaner with 1-5% NaOH, and <5% aliphatic hydrocarbons (likely a terpene), Polycarboxylates, Anionic surfactants and d-limonene. The material compatibility testing I discuss in Section X supports that the PVC is compatible with high alkaline, not so sure about the other ingredient's. The MrM is essentially ~5% dish detergent with the added horsepower of the 1-5% NaOH. All the testing I found showed that 1% soap solution did extract plasticizer. But, the amount of plasticizer in a vinyl record is pretty limited, and as you said, you are cleaning up some exceptionally dirty records. So far with my process, I have been able to clean some pretty poor condition used records with not more than two cycles of the Alconox Liquinox; including some just covered with mold. But, I have not yet bought a record that was covered with heavy grease/tar; I just pass on those.

 

Hopefully someone can do a 1-page summary of the key takeaways?!

 

Perhaps that's key here. I'm almost always, as you say, simply removing dust before and after play, and that's all that seems to be required. The records I'm listening too rarely (ever?) have any of these tough accumulations. As you do, I pass on those. Again thanks for your thoughts.

 

I can do that at some point with Neil's permission and input. Here's the thing, though: each aspect of the cleaning process has variables, so if it is just a bullet list, you lose some of the granularity of the information and that's where the value is, in my estimation. Yeah, it's a bit of a slog for someone who just wants an overview, rather than read through and digest 80 plus pages, some of it fairly technical. I had to re-read several sections to "get" it, and of course, having Neil available to discuss helped me make sense of certain things. A couple of take aways that were relevant to me:

• chemistry is important, both for its ability to clean (and not have any material impact on the vinyl) as well as for its ease of removal. Residue from the chemistry, bound with the contaminants on the record, can make a record noisier than no cleaning.
• Neil does summarize some of the various chemicals that people use for record cleaning- worth reading.
• Cleanliness itself is actually something that can be measured. We don't necessarily have the tools to do that, but Neil gives you a few tips on how to evaluate, including the use of a small UV light as well as using an ultrasonic machine (if you already have one) to test your results.
• Although I've long been an advocate of a rinse step, and using high purity water (Reagent Grade I) for that purpose, Neil's basic manual cleaning procedure not only uses tap water-- horrors (well, we all learn about minerals in tap water being bad for record cleaning) but he gets something more out of the tap-- the shearing effect of water in motion helps aid the cleaning process. And it's followed by a distilled or other purified water step, so the mineral issue with tap water is largely eliminated.
• A bunch of suggestions on filtering, both air intake on vacuum RCMs as well as filtering water on ultrasonics. Neil has an interesting approach to minimize turbulence that might affect the cavitation process of ultrasonic cleaning and probably wouldn't cost much more to implement than a single tank solution if you are DIY'ing a filtering system for ultrasonic cleaning.
• I also learned that the ratings for particulate filters can be a bit optimistic.

As I think Neil said somewhere in the paper, the devil is in the details. This is the kind of paper you can refer to, or go back to, and you may actually find an answer. And if you don't, Neil is here- to the extent appropriate, within reason, to help.

So, what you've got in Neil's paper is a detailed breakdown of processes, application of chemistry, water purity, measurements of cleanliness as well as some practical steps to improve processes using either a vacuum RCM or ultrasonic. At bottom, though, his manual process, using a fairly modest amount of equipment at reasonable cost, can get you there. I would focus on that section first, and then go into the more detailed explanations of the different steps of the process as needed.
Hope that helps and puts this into context. I'm already rethinking some things on my processes in light of some of the learning from Neil's paper. But, agreed, not for the faint of heart to dive into 85 pages of semi-technical reading.

 

I have to thank Bill Hart for graciously hosting the document and acting as a quite a bit of an editor. The version that you read is quite different from the first, and Bill provided some very valuable direction for how to best arrange the data. Bill Hart of The Vinyl Press has a keen interest in cleaning, and if you were to spend some time at his site The Vinyl Press - , and checked the about-tab you would see his system and the cleaning system he uses - a vacuum RCM and a UCM. Bill and I spent some 10-hours on the phone working this paper, and while his background is not engineering, it does not diminish his quest for knowledge and I respect that immensely. In that vein I leave you with a poem. as I listen to James Taylor October Road (pressed in clear vinyl, and absolutely silent and perfect - not a click, or pop, go figure). History has it that this poem hung over the desk of General Macarthur in Japan during the occupation and reconstruction (which by all measure was successful),

Youth, by Samuel Ullman,

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next, and the joy in the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite—so long are you young. When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old, indeed!

Stay Young and Stay Safe,

Neil

 

Bill and Neil: Thanks for directing me to The Vinyl Press. Mr. Hart has done an excellent job in producing this repository of vinyl-related data. Enjoyed the breadth, scope, and design.
AND, Bill, we share a component: also have a SUT by Ned, the same one as you do, and it works well and is nicely flexible. He is a fine person to e-mail and has provided me with much useful information. Do not think he is active anymore or at least not on EBay.

 

Thank you for the components of MrM. As you say, it is essentially dishwashing liquid plus caustic soda. We agree the caustic is safe with vinyl and dishwash liquid is a very mild detergent. So I’m happy that MrM won’t damage my vinyl. The purpose of my experiment was simply to find a cleaner that would dissolve the nastiest dirt. Like you, I have never seen a record covered with grease/tar, let alone bought one, and I don't suppose the ones I buy are exceptionally dirty. But you never know what nasties lurk in those grooves!

The big benefit of MrM is that it is a foam that penetrates into the grooves, where brushes cannot reach, and the caustic actually dissolves the dirt. Surfactant detergents will not do this. It is designed to be used cold and if it cleans my oven it will clean my vinyl. It washes away leaving no residue. When I’ve used MrM, I can be sure that the record is absolutely clean.

 

I agree. BUT I own a pretty expensive rcm (Audio Desk) and given that I believe in their engineering, I use the 'juice' they recommend; I don't want something that'll harden or eat the internals, gaskets, etc. Could I duplicate it less expensively; highly likely. So long as I know exactly what it is.

 

@pacvr thank you so much for what is probably the most comprehensive article I’ve ever seen in the topic. I am slowly going through it, and am seeing your recommendation of tergitol 15-s-9. I am using a different nonionic surfactant, triton x-100, do you have any knowledge on how those two compare and would perform differently?

here is the DOW spec sheet if it helps.
https://nshosting.dow.com/doc-archive/business/pcm/triton/triton_x-100/tds/triton_x-100.pdf

 

@recstar24, Section IX of the paper does a detailed comparison between Tergitol 15-S-9 and Triton X100. The quick summary is that Tergitol 15-S-9 is a superior and safer (environmentally) replacement of Triton X100.