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Cleaning flood damaged vinyls

My first post here and I was hopeing that someone could help with a perplexing problem. My vinyl collection (~2,000 collected over the past 50 years) was left standing in about 2" of water due to a burst water pipe - all the albums were stacked vertically and now they have a mold/mildew growth on them. My insurance carrier will pay to have them professionally cleaned. Any ideas of who does this? I could sure us the help. I currently clean my albums utilizing a Nitty Gritty with their cleaning fluid and the system that I play them through consists of a Lyra Delos mounted to a Michell Technoarm on a Michell Orbe. Preamp/phono is a Thor Audio TA 2000 connected to Sophia Electric 845 monoblocks. Speakers are older McIntosh XP-25's. CD player/dac is an Ayon Audio CD-2s
aceduck
noromance's avatar
noromance
9,821 posts
 
Nothing to add except to commiserate. It is also why I store mine 24" off the ground.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
Polyvinylchloride is very strong and resilient. Your records are definitely recoverable. I lost many of my records to a flood too, but my problem was that well-meaning in-laws stacked the albums horizontally on a mantel that warped the records. That was in 1979.

I saved some that I couldn't bear to dumpster and about 38 years later I found that detergent and a handheld steamer could completely clean the mold out of the grooves.

Unfortunately that is time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially when 2,000 LPs are involved. So you need to hire a professional cleaner. My point is that they can be recovered. Just find a good cleaning service, get the estimate, and make the claim with the insurer.

The record jackets, however, are another issue. :(
inna
7,296 posts
 
Would insurance pay for ultrasonic machine and cleaning fluids? I would get KL Audio machine and Audio Intelligent three step original or Archivist kit. I would also get something like Walker kit for comparizon. Maybe Last too.
Steaming is risky, you must be able to control the temperature. Professional cleaning would be more expensive and most likely no better. If you have the machine you can clean any record a few times, a professional is unlikely to do it. In fact, if I were the one I could refuse working on it because nothing is guaranteed.
czarivey
5,946 posts
 
How about jackets? Records loose 75% or more of value if not with jacket.
aceduck OP
2 posts
 
Thanks!! - This will give me a direction to proceed - There is not a lot of info on the net on professional vinyl cleaners.
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