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I was wondering if anyone knows what year vacuum record cleaning machines were first invented?
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I have several Victorolas and one has a wood handled velvet covered brush for cleaning the records though that was more for removing the built up ground shellac from needle wear than plain dirt I imagine :)
HI,
Yes the Monks machine was the first one I heard of. 1967 sounds about right. I really wanted one but they were out of my income range by a long ways.My first machine was the VPI 16 (mid '80's ??), later traded for the VPI 17 when it first came out which I still have and love. I could not live without a GOOD cleaning machine.
...the first wet vacuum type cleaner, at least commercially available. Did most people in the 60's and 70's use them? Nah, they were certainly out of my budget back then. I did have a Keith Monks mercury contact tonearm, but that thing caused dane brammage.There WERE some interesting cleaning devices around though, including the already mentioned Discwasher and various Watts products.
There were at least two other powered cleaners available in the 1970's that I'm aware of. One was the "Vac-o-Rec", which I owned. The record was inserted into the V shaped slot vertically. Brushes on both sides of the slot contacted the record as it rotated, and a small vacuum drew the surface dust away. It also de-staticized the record, and worked pretty well.
The other was called "The Wisker", The record was placed on a spindle horizontally, and a round, tube like brush rotated around the top surface of the record after some sort of fluid was applied. The Wisker is the recipient of my all time favorite Absolute Sound review. HP wrote: "Plainly a piece of shit." as his entire review of the Wisker. If all their reviews were still that short, sweet, and to the point I might still be subscribing.
which according to their web site was first put on the market in 1967. I think Percy Wilson (late tech editor of Gramophone) was involved in its design.
dealer in the late 1970s. Sheffield Audio, if memory serves.
Henry
in the 1985-ish time frame, I believe. In those days everyone that took rekkids seriously had a DiscWasher brush, and that was about it...
I had what I believe to be what anyone might call a machine...more correctly a tool. The Watt parastat was a sponge tube that slid out of a perforated tube of plastic so that one could moisten it and insert it back into that tube which was in turn wrapped with a soft spongy material and covered with velvet.And everyone I knew thought I was out of my damned mind for owning and using one...and that was in the mid-sixties! But I had about 500 LPs by then anyway...who the hell in their right mind would own 500 LPs?
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If I had more money I'd soon be broke...but I'd have more LPs!
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