Thumbs up for ultrasonic record cleaning

@terry9 Those Elmasonic machines look very nice!  What size tank are you using?

I should have my DIY system in a few days.  Has anyone used TergiKleen™ in their bath?  I figured it was safer to buy a pre-mixed solution to get the regimen down pat.  Then I can experiment with home brewed mixtures.

Well I am 12 records in and completely sold on US cleaning.  I did some old records and some new.  One was even sealed since 1988.  I played that one first and although 80s vinyl quality are infamously crappy, this pressing was fantastic.  Especially for 80s Thrash Metal.  But what sold me most was cleaning my early US-pressed Led Zep III.  It went from a VG to arguably a NM record.  And for this record, there are a lot of acoustic parts, so it was quite annoying with all the pops and ticks.  Now, it's fantastic.  I did a PF Animals early German pressing with similar results.  A '73 UK pressing of PF's Darkside of the Moon, same result.  Plays fantastic now.  The only disappointment was my RL Led Zep II pressing.  The thing is just mangled with scratches though :(  But it definitely sounds better than it did before.  I'm going to do another batch this afternoon.  This is fun!

I've been experimenting a fair amount over the past week.  At first, I was running the tank around 40-43 degrees Celsius, for 3 turns @ 7 mins/turn.  So 21 minutes total.  After reading more on the VPI forums, I decided to try Harry's recommendation of no heat (other than cavitation generated)  and increasing the rotation speed.  So I have been doing 10 minutes without heat @ 4.5 mins/rotation.  Really, there's not much perceivable difference.  It's a bit of apples to oranges or I'd say there is no difference.  Although some records are going to need another bath because they still have a fair amount of pops and ticks.  But this was even the case at 21 minutes.  They are probably just beyond cleaning.  What I don't agree with on the other forum thread is the loss of highs.  Even at high heat for 21 minutes, I immediately noticed the opposite - increased upper treble extension.  So maybe my gear isn't quite good enough to notice a loss in highs or maybe it's simply not happening (I suspect the latter).  I think I've cleaned about 80 records so far.  Still a loooong way to go.

Wow, thanks guys. 
@slaw  No issues with treble for those longer/warmer sessions?  
@whart   Yeah, I do have a few more valuable records that are very noisy and would love to spend the time to clean them up if it's even possible.  One that I really treasure is an RL/ss (both sides) Led Zeppelin II pressing.  I just don't know how much is groove damage/scratches vs. dirt.  As long as I'm not damaging the record, I don't mind wasting time on it experimenting.

@slaw  Thank you for that!  I feel a lot better now.  I was worried some of the early experiments might have been softened a bit from higher/longer temps.  But once records are US cleaned, the differences between warm and bright recordings are even more substantial.

I'm another 'air-dryer'.  Because I don't have a vacuum.  So my process is to Spin Clean w/ their solution first, put them on the VinylStack, drop into the bath for 10 minutes and then take it over to the kitchen sink and run warm water over them while the labels are protected.  Then I use a spin clean with distilled water and then put them in a file rack with a fan running.  Occasionally I'll see a drop but it's pretty rare.  They normally come out spotless.  But I know a vacuum would be much better.  I might head down that path at some point.