Yes... It IS fun. Really fun. And provides lots of incentive to go back through the collection to rediscover some old favorites and hear them better than ever.
I’m currently listening to a freshly cleaned copy of The Stones - Get Your Ya Ya’s Out. I’ve owned this record since at least college (think late 70’s) and it was played frequently back in the day. It sounds great. Far better than I remember. Mick Taylor’s guitar sounds glorious. There are still some tics and pops, probably due to some damage, but all in all, pretty great.
I’m on a slightly different mission now. I want to get through my entire collection. I’ve cleaned about half of my records with my Cleaner Vinyl Pro using just a 15 minute wash step (initially using distilled water, soap, and alcohol, now using VersaClean, Photoflow and distilled water), and finished on the Record Doctor.
However, as more people have joined the thread, I’ve learned more (thanks in particular to @terry9, @slaw, @whart) and now I want to make sure I add a rinse step before vacuuming. This necessitates going back through the first half of the collection as well as handling the second half.
So, I went all in and bought a second US tank and another Cleaner Vinyl. This gives me twice the capacity to go through the rinse step for the previously cleaned part of the collection. Also, because of the way Cleaner Vinyl just hangs on the side of the tank, when I do the second half I will just pick up the unit with records from the clean tank and drop it in the rinse tank, the second Cleaner Vinyl will already be loaded with records so I will just drop that in the cleaning tank.
Using this approach I can have US cleaning and rinsing going on simultaneously and following each rinse step with a spin on the Record Doctor to dry it. I know some like to air dry, but I’m on a mission to get through my collection and vacuuming speeds the drying as well as sucking any remaining dirt from the album. Once I’m through my collection I will sell one of the Cleaner Vinyl’s and US tanks. No doubt suffering a loss, but the compensation is I will get through my collection at a much faster pace.
I also built a pump and filter assembly as described previously and use that on the cleaning tank. In my case I’m also sold on having an external thermometer - the thermometers on my US tanks are out of touch with reality. See previous post for a link to the thermometer on Amazon.
