Cleaning Records

Her dad was an old-time radio guy for VoA and other things (maybe he was a spook - we don't know). This was his way of "helping" her get over her crushing anxiety.

I have the iSonic with the ten record capacity. It's admittedly pretty pricey still, so if the Vevor gets good marks from DJI and others I would go with that.

There's not a lot to these things and the base units are not that expensive. More of the cost and engineering seems to go into how it deals with the records (motor, spinning, keeping labels dry, etc.) and how much they want to fleece audiophiles ;)

I wouldn’t use straight soap on a record, especially without rinsing it. That’s going to leave some sort of residue. Spin Clean fluid has something in it that does not leave a residue, and it has a deflocculant in it which reduces the viscosity of the water so the funky stuff sinks to the bottom instead of mixing with the water and making a soup that goes back onto the record.

I don’t know anything about Vevor cleaners or what you are supposed to use with them, but soap and water doesn’t sound right.

Totally agreed. I use the cleaner that came with it but there are tons of recommended concoctions to be found on the internet.

One recommendation I've read is to follow the ultrasonic cleaning with a rinse in the spin clean with distilled water only before drying to get rid of any cleaning residue. I haven't tried this yet because I'm too lazy and it seems to be working great without it. Makes sense though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agSC-dLNXXg

omg

Vevor machine arrived today. first of all, LMAO at these instructions. you get one beat up sheet of grainy out of order photos. I think I have it assembled though, but what are all these leftover plastic parts for? I have these two plastic sheets with holes in them and a bunch of rods & wingnuts.

also, what temp do y'all set this to? I assume you wanna keep this low?

oh wait. that's the record drying rack. LOL

I don't have the Vevor, but mine has a stop that it only gets to 95 degrees. Heat helps the cleaning action, but you don't want it to actually be hot as that could damage the records.

I set it as cold as possible. Anything warmer than room temperature I assume is gonna start softening your vinyl & run the risk of warping.

(A warning about the Vevor unit: when you turn it off or unplug it, the temperature frustratingly resets itself to warm - mine defaults to 45°C - warm enough to warp the crap out of what I was cleaning cuz I didn’t notice… good thing I bought a Vinyl Flat!)

alright so I cycled through about 15 records on this thing. on some records (which I'd already used the spin clean on) there wasn't really much improvement. granted, these are the ones that were pretty scratched up and probably unsalvageable. a few did sound notably better, despite already having gone through the spin. but it didn't fix the ones that skipped.

the real test was Green by Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green and the Kankyo Ongaku comp - bought both these new and I thought I'd taken good care of them, but over a dozen or so plays they've accumulated some surface noise. obviously both of these are fairly quiet ambient records so I figured they'd be a good test. definitely a reduction of surface noise on both, but it didn't entirely go away. it's at a level where I'd probably not notice if it were, say, a rock or technopop record.

one thing I did notice is that the music itself sounds better - I put through Trilogy by ELP and Seventh Sojourn by the Moody Blues and though some of the clicks and pops are still there (again, these are mostly scratches) the music itself sounded fuller and more dynamic than the last time I played them. so it definitely did something.

another thing is that some of the modern pressings I put through which had clicks and scrapes weren't really improved at all. I think a lot of stuff that gets released these days is just a bad pressing. like 25-30% of the new vinyl I buy has some kind of noise on it which you can't see and you can't get off. for example my copy of Tri Repetae has a scraping noise through a bunch of "Overand". was this a big problem in the 70s?

Hope you like the purchase. I agree records sound a lot better even if I've encountered plenty of records that weren't dead quiet post-cleaning.

so far my impression is that it doesn't work miracles but there's enough of a noticeable difference between this and the spin clean that it's been worth the purchase.

it doesn't get rid of the clicking that you can hear on every rotation...I was hoping that maybe it could because sometimes those clicks are invisible on the surface. it does seem to make them a little quieter though. mostly what it's good for is getting rid of all those random little pops and clicks that become irritating on quieter records. for example my copy of NTS 4 by Autechre was unfortunately riddled with a bunch of surface noise, which is odd because the other 3 are excellent. the spin clean helped a little but not much. ultrasonic got it pretty much dead quiet though, outside of a few sections that click here and there (if only for a few seconds). I'm guessing it just had a bunch of shit getting into the grooves when it was pressed. either way I was mulled buying a new copy so it saved me $30 there at least :)

one thing I am curious about though is how many records you should be stacking on this thing. for me I find you can get 8 records on the spindle and it all fits pretty tightly with the dividers. I've heard though that you actually should only be running 2-3 at a time though for the best effect. But I'm not sure how exactly the extra space is gonna help, as even with 8 the ultrasonic pulses are clearly getting to the full surface of each album. Plus I'm afraid that doing less might cause the dividers to not fit so tightly, which could get the labels wet.

outside of a few sections that click here and there (if only for a few seconds)

I apologize in advance for making a "how do you know that isn't just Autechre" joke

(in reality I am following this discussion with interest but I'm not convinced I need anything aside from my spinclean because I can just pay 5 bucks for a VPI cleaning at my local store in the rare case I need it)

PBKR, what was the brand and/or model of the ultrasonic cleaner you bought? I'm in exactly the same situation. Thx.

It's the iSonic P4875II with the 10 record adapter. As I stated upthread, the adapter that allows you to add the extra 5 records feels a little fiddly and 10 records was too many for me to dry quickly at one time.

Thanks!

FYI, older versions (not the II) did not have the heat regulator so it could get much hotter than you would want for records.

Also, do some research, because after I bought mine I saw references online (possibly dated) that you can save some money by buying the cleaner and the record apparatus separately.

Another ultrasonic victory: I had bought a new copy of Greg Foat's The Mage that was unplayable - it sounded like it was underwater and I assumed it was a pressing problem or they used a corrupted digital file. I couldn't return it because I hadn't been able to listen to it for several months after I got it. I ran it through the cleaner for the heck of it and it completely took care of the issue, which must have been residue from the pressing process.

OK that's pretty wild

I've heard new vinyl sometimes has a residue but never experienced it before myself.

yeah I'm wondering if it's good practice to just run everything through the cleaner before I even play it. I feel like half of the new vinyl I get has some defect on it...a pop here, a scrape there, etc. a lot of times it goes away after a cleaning, but sometimes it doesn't. I think when records are pressed it's pretty common for stuff to just get lodged in the grooves and a lot of times it's hard to get out.

Yeah, I prioritize my oldest, dirtiest records, but any thing that shows a problem goes through now. I cleaned 60 this week so far. Hoping to get through everything this winter so that I can just clean new purchases going forward.

how often do you change the water out? I ran like 20 through, decided to just leave the tank full and do another batch the next day, but I'm not sure if that's a great idea

It probably depends on how big your tank is, but I do up to 60 (in batches of 5) in one tank. I usually top up the tank during the cleaning as some of the water comes off on the records.

The instructions for my tank says not to leave the the water in the tank for an extended period of time. No explanation of what that means, but I figure 24 hours probably won't hurt so I will do a run of 30 and then a run of 30 the next day. The water looks kind of rough after that many.

Not as rough as the spin clean I saw in use at a record store one time where the water was pitch black.

Ok, so I miscounted. The most I would do is a run of 15 and another run of 15 the next day, so a total of 30 in one tank.

i dunno who needs to know this, but several of the isonic models have a prime day discount on amazon...