Is it possible to have vinyl nearly noise free?

Rollintubes-exactly.  Although I do have some newer 78s, the HRS reissues exceptional vocal 78s on virgin vinyl from the original metal parts.  Those are tick and pop free surfaced 78s.  The rest of my 7,000 78s date from 1898 to early 1950s and are considered old by current standards.  I also consider purchasing the Kirmuss ultrasonic cleaning system for 78s where I just let the machine do all the cleaning and don't contaminate my VPI cleaning machine. 

I've tried cleaning some noisy valuable LPs, such as 50's EMI and Deccas worth $100-1000 new that turn out to be damaged by prior user (and cost me about $1/disc).  Those would also be worth digitizing   Due to my new home and listening room costs, I can't splurge on a Sugar Cube 2 for another year.  

The Kirmuss appears to do a better job than the Audio Desk or Clearaudio cleaners at less cost. If you have some really nasty vinyl or lacquer it will do nicely at a lower initial purchase price. The process is more painstaking than mine and I spent less than $500 on my system. Of course the Vacuum cleaner was more. It does most of the drying. He uses optician cloth. I use them all the time to wipe off records. I notice he just uses the cloth to dry. How long can you use the same cloth before it becomes saturated.

I don't agree with using distilled water though. There are still contaminants in it, that is why I use Regents water. There is nothing in it.

I think that the assumption is that the records were never cleaned or cleaned with a single liquid agent that leaves residue. Which is most likely for most of our records acquired before the 90s. Removing the vinyl release agents is paramount which is why I clean every new record before playing.

Once cleaned the record should stay that way unless mishandled. There is the issue of more micro-dust getting into the grooves while playing. At some point there will be a loss of detail that will require a cleaning. By rinsing every so often with the Regents water and conditioner I may stave of the micro-dust problem for a while.

Rollin

Isn’t the purpose of loading resistors to damp the primary resonance of the moving system in a phono cartridge?

In the case of a LOMC cartridge, no. The primary resonance is well outside of the audio band!

you will find others like Ralph, that do not clean their records and claim that guys like me are wasting time and money. You will also find guys like me. If we could actually get Chicago guys to get together, we could do some kind of A/B, shootout etc. The Chicago Audio Society is worthless. I have reached out to Chicago guys, to get together before and have had no responses. So, it is a lone endeavor to clean records or not. Your choice. IMO, I agree with slaw, that Ralphs take, is a bit of overreach.

I'm not saying you're wasting your money. I'm saying that if you have a stable preamp you get a lot less ticks and pops. In my case I found that far outweighed the benefit of cleaning. It true that we experience more oticks and pops at shows- our LPs there tend to get a bit more beat up and I've retired a few over the years on that account. At home I am used to hearing entire sides free of that sort of thing unless the album side has some damage.

The next obvious question...Do you ever/feel a need to clean your stylus?

Yes. I dust it before every album side. I also clean it with LAST.


I used to use a record cleaning machine as I mentioned before. But once I sorted out what the phono preamp's role was in surface noise, I did as much as I could to make sure that my preamp ticked all the boxes. At that point that made more difference than the cleaning. Of course I use a dust brush which probably does reduce ticks and pops by my goal there is simply to prevent dust buildup on the stylus.

Ralph, that's is exactly what happened when I upgraded my phono/pre-amps.  The solid state 70's and 80's phono/pre-amps  illuminated the pops and clicks.  I couldn't believe how quiet my LPs got after switching to a high end subminiature tube set of phono/pre-amps since 2009 or even the intermediate EAR 864 pre-amp & EAR 324 phono pre-amp from 2006.  Also, my MCs finally got the correct impedance loading using SUTs.   47K exacerbated the tipped up highs and record noise.

@geoffkait  There are already 10,000 threads about digital vs vinyl.  You could post on one of those.

@OP  My experience is that the factors that influence ticks and pops the most are:

1. Good Setup.  Get your Azimuth, Tracking force, VTA, etc right and with the stylus deep in the groove you will be mostly hidden away from the nasties.
2. Clean records.  Easier said than done.
3. Elliptical or better stylus.  This works with 1. above.