Record Cleaner Advice?
Well I need to interject here My Vibrato, assembled in SC. Works on 80khz, (4) transducers, has a frequency sweep function, a heater. Retail is $875.00 www.vibratollc.com Just had it refurbished. It's unclear if Louis will continue making these. |
This site sells 132-kHz units -
CleanerVinyl Ultrasonic Record Cleaning. I know of at least person that uses their 40-kHz unit for pre-clean and then the 132-kHz unit for final clean. The individual has some physical limitations and this setup can pretty much clean anything. 1. Step 1 - 40kHz; use the Tergitol 15-S-9 at 0.05 to 0.1%; for your 6000 mL tank that is 3-6 mL (no benefit for >6 mL/0.1%). For his 6000 mL tank he just adds 60-70 drops. This concentration will develop a wetting solution and micelles that will provided detergency. When he removes the record - gives it a few seconds to drain into the tank. As a wetting solution it will drain very quickly - this will minimize carry-over to the 132kHz tank. 2. Step 2 - 132kHz; use the Tergitol 15-S-9 at 0.01%; for his 6000 mL tanks that is 0.6 mL - to keep it simple just use 10 drops. For the 132kHz this is the final polish and the amount of Tergitol 15-S-9 is only to achieve a 'wetting' solution. You want the US and low surface tension fluid to do the work - he should not need detergency at this level. |
I had an old nitty gritty that I thought did a good job. Then I purchased a Degritter and the improvement is clearly audible. I’m cleaning old records that I thought were clean but didn’t sound so good so rarely played them. after using Degritter they now are wonderful. At first I used the included cleaning solution that came with the machine and was very happy with results. Now I’m trying Tergikleen to preclean records then using Degritter with just demineralized water. Not sure if it is better than the included solution but trying on different records. Highly recommended |
@lxgreen - your response raises a number of good issues, none of which are confined to the Nitty Gritty machine. One is multiple cleaning methods and steps, which I have found to be synergistic. Despite your delight with the results of the Degritter, you may want to keep your Nitty Gritty around as a pre-cleaner for records that aren’t effectively cleaned with an ultrasonic process. The other issue is whether you want to use a surfactant as part of the ultrasonic cleaning process. We are told (and have seen photos showing) that the surfactant in the bath enhances the cavitation process by lowering the surface tension of the bath water. The question then becomes how one effectively removes the residue of that surfactant in completing the cleaning process. Forced air drying will not do so; I had that experience when I owned the AD and could see how records cleaned with it exhibited a different behavior when wetted than a record that had not been run through the AD. This suggested to me that some surfactant remained on the record surface, though frankly, I never heard a sonic signature from it. (I used little more than a capful of the AD fluid, rather than a whole bottle, based on comments from some early adopters). I know the Degritter allows you to change out water containers which means you could conceivably clean with a surfactant, then change the water "cartridge" to a "pure" water container for a rinse cycle-- but that "pure" water bath is going to get polluted pretty quickly with surfactant residue. Distilled water is certainly cheap enough in the States to enable you to change out the water constantly, but you’d probably have to clean the inner walls of that container (and Lord knows what the innards involve in terms of removing any surfactant traces from the inside of the machine itself). Am I being a bit anal about this? Sure. One solution is to finish the record using pure water and a vacuum process, but the Nitty Gritty may not be conducive to that. I also wonder if not doing a "pure" water rinse step when you were using only the Nitty Gritty resulted in less than satisfactory results- that is, there was residue of the cleaning solution along with other contaminants (that you were trying to remove) that were still bound to the record surface. Good luck with your Degritter- in the current market, that seems like the unit to go for "one button" LP cleaning. I’ve only heard good things about the unit, including from @albertporter, a longtime Audiogon member who has owned and used virtually every high end RCM. I’m still thinking of a design for an industrial level ultrasonic that might accomplish it all for less than 10k Dollars. :) In the meantime, we soldier on. Bill Hart |
