Peter and Gradys,
Don't waste your time. In our experience steaming is ineffective at best, and more likely to do harm than good at worst.
We've tried it, with three different recommended steamers, using every technique espoused by the acolytes. Waste of time. Waste of money.
We've also re-cleaned friends' steam "cleaned" records (including one of Dan's while Sunnyboy was visiting). The results were the same each time. Steaming is a joke compared with methods that actually work.
Those methods do take time, as Markd51 described, but if we want to hear all the music in the grooves that's part of the cost of admission. Wish it weren't so, but it is.
Compared to the most effective methods, steaming actually makes things worse. The water we use for LP rinsing is so pure it leached impurities out of every steamer it touched. I'm not spraying that on my LPs, but we did keep one steamer for cleaning the toilets. ;)
Don't waste your time. In our experience steaming is ineffective at best, and more likely to do harm than good at worst.
We've tried it, with three different recommended steamers, using every technique espoused by the acolytes. Waste of time. Waste of money.
We've also re-cleaned friends' steam "cleaned" records (including one of Dan's while Sunnyboy was visiting). The results were the same each time. Steaming is a joke compared with methods that actually work.
Those methods do take time, as Markd51 described, but if we want to hear all the music in the grooves that's part of the cost of admission. Wish it weren't so, but it is.
Compared to the most effective methods, steaming actually makes things worse. The water we use for LP rinsing is so pure it leached impurities out of every steamer it touched. I'm not spraying that on my LPs, but we did keep one steamer for cleaning the toilets. ;)