Vinyl Cleaning

Jimbo3: the 99.9% pure refers, as far as I know, to the ratio of alcohol to water. It is essentially impossible to distill 100% alcohol, since alcohol will pick up water vapor from the air. The 99.9% stuff I buy, however, is also pure with regard to other agents that are sometimes found in alcohol. The one cautionary note for anyone planning to make their own cleaning solution is DO NOT use rubbing alcohol. It often has often ingredients that are intended for use on human skin, and these substances are NOT good for vinyl LP's.

I will add my endorsement to Sdcampbell's recommendation. I have been using an alcohol and distilled water formula almost identical to his for 20 years on several thousands of records with no ill effect. The only difference is the use of 92% isopropyl (also from the local drug store) and the addition of about 10 drops of Kodak Photo-flo as a wetting agent.

If you want record cleaning formulas goto www.tnt-audio.com/

The DIY section has lots of different brews.

Listen to the Psychic...

Rushton: good to know someone else uses essentially the same solution. The formula I use was provided to me by a now deceased friend, who made a part-time living buying estate collections of LP's and re-selling them -- mainly to the Japanese collector market. My friend David probably cleaned 30,000 LP's over a 15-year period using the formula I recommend, and he never had any problems with it. Furthermore, this solution tastes GREAT -- and, it's less filling!

Sdcampbell: At one time I recall Anthony Cordesman describing essentially this same formula in a TAS article. Interesting how information seems to get shared in this small community of ours.