Why are record cleaners so expensive?

"But you can't compare the Audio Desk to your Spin-Clean device. Apples/oranges."

He wasn't comparing the two. He was posing a not uninteresting question, and merely noted what he uses to clean his records.

-- Howard

I wish someone would come up with an affordable and effective automatic ultrasonic cleaner.    The ones I see available to-date are just way to expensive for most.

Map, I think you can get in for about a grand, if you use one of those kits and a generic US bath. Still too much?

Thank you, @hodu . I wasn't complaining at all but merely saying that in terms of vinyl cleaners, I had a very basic one and wanted to know what separated it from a $3K one.

And, @whart  and @cleeds , I'm not complaining about anything. I'm simply curious as to the construction and machinations of expensive vinyl cleaners that warranted their cost. Still, even if I had $3K to drop on a vinyl cleaner, I doubt I'd do it unless, as @ebm pointed out, I had a substantial investment in lp's.

It's all relative, though, as can be said about any purchase/value.

A grand is certainly better than most I see. :^).

For someone interested in building a big vinyl colelction these days its not a bad investment.  $3000 maybe not bad as well if called for.

 New records typically go for $30 and up. BUy 30 or so and you have a grand. Assume those come clean and do not need much if any cleaning if taken care of properly.

Now you can save a lot of money buying used vinyl for much less, sometime just a dollar or two, maybe less, but often these require a very thorough initial cleaning. You might be able to buy 1000 or more records for that grand and then clean them and have them like new and maybe even better sounding than new vinyl in many cases. 1000 records at $30 each would cost $30000 in comparison. So you saved $29000. Not bad. I suppose these are teh kinds of scenarios to consider to justify the investment.

I do have a very effective manual cleaning process I use that costs next to nothing per record, but it is time consuming and a pain to execute properly, though not too hard with some experience.