Cleaning records. How often really?

All that desert air would be great for a turntable if it wasn't for all that static electricity from that dry air.

It gets pretty dry here on the coldest days in winter. Most homes have natural gas forced air heating, I have found keeping the record in an antistatic sleeve is important. With new/old records I bring in, the paper sleeves are discarded. You can clearly see the particles on the record from these new sleeves on new records when you first pull them out. The records are cleaned but its important to not let them dry out totally from the vacuuming in dry conditions. They are left in the open air for a few minutes and then go into the antistatic sleeves. This seems to work for me. There is no sticking when you pull them out. And its also only on the TT for about 40 minutes. I also would run an extra wire from the bearing sump on the conventional TT's to ground them better. The Verdier which uses magnets for levitation (no thrust bearing) for some reason its not as affected. I don't know why. Maybe someone can better explain the phenomena. For those of you using a regular brush on the record try grounding yourself with your other hand when using it.

I was in Arizona about 10 years ago near Phoenix attending a conference. We went to a bar at night. You went through this Western style gate and everything was open - no roof; but were surrounded by these horizontal pipes maybe 1 inch in diameter ? - hanging above our heads. A thin jet mist of cool water was spraying out of the pores in the pipe on us. After a while I realized we could not have stayed there long without the spray.

11-27-15: Bdp24
Another thing about the desert air (at least the low desert here in S. California) is the amount of dirt in it, blown around by the winds. Since there is little ground cover, there are actual dust storms when it gets windy. Even with all the windows shut (to keep the heat out, if for no other reason), there is dust everywhere, and the house has to be cleaned way more frequently than in L.A.

Hi Eric, so what does the hard core vinyl guy with thousands of records do in S. California? Build some kind of bubble room ? The houses here have a sealed vapor barrier in front of the insulation going around the entire house including the full basements. This vapor barrier is very similar to the dust cover on your Quad 57's except heavy duty. The windows are double pane with similar insulation values to the walls. I guess one of these
would come in handy for some in that type of dusty environment.
Cheers Chris

One way to get rid of the residual dust that gets past filters, seals and every other mechanical strategy available, is ionization. There are room ionizers and whole house units (even some that can be installed in an existing HVAC system.)

They act by charging airborne particulates so that they are strongly attracted to ground, and settle to the floor. If the floor is carpeted, that's helpful as they tend to remain collected there until vacuumed up.

Speaking of 'grounding', like many folks, I usually gave my records a swipe with a carbon brush just before lowering the stylus. But I was never satisfied with the result, because dust remained on the record, or got re-attracted to the vinyl surface during play. I thought of some tips I'd seen or read about attaching a ground(ed) wire to the brush. In theory, that should have solved the problem; but after implementing this suggestion, the results were nil. I was puzzled -- until I realized that the carbon bristles were not electrically in contact with the metal of the brush handle! So wire or no wire, there was simply no way for the charge to drain to ground! I could only find one carbon-fiber brush which construction satisfied this requirement, and that is the Hunt EDA No. 6 brush. The carbon bristles are clamped firmly into the aluminum handle; so if you run a wire from the handle to a suitable ground, a single brush swipe will remove all the remaining dust from your record AND it will also remove any remaining charge from the vinyl itself, so it won't attract more dust while it's playing.
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Dust a lot, Chris! A turntable with a dust cover that can be in place during play is a must, and I use an old-fashioned shaving cream brush to dust my table's platter. I will face a different challenge when relocated up in Portland, that of moisture in the air, not dust. I'll gladly take that!

11-27-15: Nsgarch
It's the EXACT SAME STUFF as Premier and as you can see, much less expensive! I understood it is more a replacement for carbon tetrachloride than for freon. It's a better solvent than either of them IMO; it dries fast (too fast!) and leaves NO residue.

Hi Nsgarch

taken from Premier's website is this wording.

Premier

But Premiér features a special additive which breaks those 'static' bonds, freeing the dust to float off the LP. This unleashes the 'like new' sound thats trapped in your LPs -- getting rid of the static means you get rid of the dust, along with the snaps and pops and cracks which drive you nuts.

So what is the special additive ...By chance is it a well known wetting agent ?

This is the battery operated record brush I was referring to in my earlier post that I got from an audio friend.

battery record brush
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