Feb 3, 2020
The audio equipment must be kept clean. You need to remove fine dust before listening, sometimes clean the needle, keep the surface of the disc or mat of the player clean, but very often you need to do something with the record itself.
During storage, it becomes contaminated, over the years, internal paper envelopes become dilapidated, and remake vinyl sometimes has contaminants left after pressing.
In different sources, the topic of washing and cleaning vinyl has been discussed repeatedly, but the problem is that it is difficult to choose from many tips and choose the best vinyl cleaning kit.
Home Ways to Clean Vinyl Records
It is necessary to pay attention to the main problems of cleaning the plates. Do not remove any dirt or brushes from the depth of the groove. Brushes and rollers – this is for the current cleaning of dust and in order to remove static, but no more.
It is necessary to say about the use of a wood glue: in theory, everything is simple – put glue on the plate, it hardens, sticking to all the impurities, and then the resulting film is easily removed.
However, this does not work with old records, because the dirt in the grooves is clogged tightly. In the case of using high-quality glue, the result will be, but it is far from ideal.
The most effective way is to wash the plates. There are two main ways – manually, protecting the “apple” and soaking the plate in water, washing solutions and under running water, or you can use a special machine.
Manual Cleaning
With regard to manual cleaning, usually used for washing or purchased special solutions, or a mixture of ethyl and isopropyl alcohol and distilled water in different proportions. It is undesirable to add detergents, such as those used for dishes. There is little use from them, and after that, you need to rinse the plate much more carefully.
Mechanical cleaning
If we talk about washing machines, the most popular are machines with a vacuum pump for removing liquid. In practice, they give the most effective result. Only particularly dirty plates require some pre-soaking or several washing cycles.
You can theoretically also manually wash the plate well, but it is very difficult, and it will take several times more time and effort, moreover, a pair of isopropyl alcohol is not particularly healthy. However, the machines have one drawback – the price.
