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Hey Anybody,I recently got a record cleaning machine. What a difference it makes!! I am using a home brew that I am generally pleased with, although it doesn't dry quite as quickly as the sample I got from KAB. I was at my local record store and asked them what they used. They told me that they clean them by hand with straight denatured alcohol becuase when the record drys there is no residue left on the record. Makes sense to me, but what do you think about that or do you have any good recipes?
The one I am using is as follows:
3 1/2 Distilled Water
1pt 91% Isopropyl Alchol
40 drops Photoflo
2 oz. Lysol Anti-Bacterial Kitchen Cleaner
Follow Ups:
Better do a search before getting in any deeper. Lotsa people decrying ANY alcohol, surfactants, etc. and making the whole thing into a religion.Not that there's anything wrong with that, but some of them do get pretty intense :-)
I approached one of our R&D folks here about this. This guy is pretty sharp (in fact his previous job at Gillette was to "make the blade sharper," as he put it). He is not a chemist. He is currently working on cleaning our metal products, somewhat related. According to him, Isopropyl Alcohol leaves a residue. It does. This is not debatable. And he is using "lab grade." Put a drop onto a mirror, let it dry and you will see a whitish residue. I suggested to him that maybe I should just leave it out of my cleaning fluid. He recommended leaving it in. The Iso molecule is "polar", one end attaches to water, the other to oil, this property is desirable for what we are doing. He suggested 10% or so. He also suggested using the lab grade or tape head cleaner from Radio Shack instead of the pharmacy type, but didn't seem to have any great concern about it, since it is vacuumed up anyway. For the bulk of the fluid, distilled water. He was wary of having to use "de-ionized", he didn't feel this helped. Water is run through a column of pellets to get "de-ionized" (he showed me, he has one). Distilling is what really cleans up the water. A surfactant is needed and he suggested Triton XL-100. A few drops, not much is needed. I indicated some people were using dishwasher liquid, he did not like the idea, "too harsh" he said (with a heavy Chinese accent). I got the impression he generally liked this mixture, which is well known and used by many vinyl cleaners, apparently.One thing to add was a suggestion to look into the use of automobile windshield washer fluid as a medium. He said he had done some research with this cleaning our product and found it to leave virtually no residue. These are methanol based. Of course, this may utterly destroy vinyl, he is speaking specifically about cleaning our metal products and the fact that it showed to leave low residue. I pressed him for a brand to no avail. I did spray some clear Armor-All I had laying around onto one of my more stubborn albums, not sure it did much better than my mixture, but this particular fluid was not what he was talking about ("the blue stuff"). Something to fool around with when you get one of those lost causes or a Barry Manilow album...
It's no use. I've tried.No application of fluids or amount of scrubbing will get that whiny voice and insipid lyrics out of the records.
Howdy... Did you get the KAB EV1?Do a search here and on Google, you'll get plenty of recipe ideas. They are as varied as you can imagine. I would guess the only way to know for sure which you like is to try variations yourself. I'll be getting into the business of cleaning my records with a KAB EV1 one of these days when I purchase it, so I'm not speaking from experience yet. I'm just beginning to realize how much better my noisy dirty records will sound when they've been properly cleaned. I haven't even cleaned them by hand yet. Just a dry brush...shame on me!
Yes, I got the KAB EV-1. I am very pleased with the way it works. The only draw back is the mind numbing tedious process of cleaning records by hand. I have about 400 records and I am NOT looking forward to the job.
Well, sounds like the KAB is the way to go to clean so many records since the nitty gritty overheats after 10 records or so.I do have a question, where does the cleaning solution go to after it is cleaned off the LP? I know the attachment keeps it from going into the vacuum, I'm just curious if it goes into the KAB box?
The liquid mostly evaporates. Any additonal is collected in a box.Does anyone have any experience with straight de-natured alcohol?
Another possibility worth exploring is the use of C-4 or it's Eastern
European equivalent semtex to literally blast the crud out of the groove, the biggest problem is the initiation phase of this cleaning procedure as the initiators or blasting caps needed to fire off the Platique will unfortunately trash the record and the table beneath it
perhaps Nano technology will come to the rescue with a microscopic Nano type initiator.
Forming an appropriate cleaning charge small enough to get way down in the groove would also unfortunately be somewhat time consuming as well as tedious proceedure.
Good luck in your courageous re-inventing the wheel ;-)
It works great, but you do need to rent an industrial sand blaster
as a follow up. You might also try some of the more concentarated acids and bases as well.
nt
I indeed read your excellent well thought out post.
Perhaps the Propylene Glycol is the culprit ?On the Bi-polar issue I experimented with Lithium as it
did wonder for my ex ;-)All kidding aside once I started using Disc. Dr. I abandonded
DIY solvents altogether about 6 months later RRL and either is
infinately superior to any DIY at least any I experimented with.Kind Regards FredJ
There's an EV1 on Audiogon with no bids and a reserve of $49.95. Sounds like you need to replace the slot pad (4 replacements-enough to clean about 800 records-available for $15 from KAB).This of course only came on Audiogon after I'd ordered mine from KAB for $160 (don't have it yet but anxiously awaiting its arrival). Just thought I'd let you know.
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