Thumbs up for ultrasonic record cleaning

@terry9,

I was somewhat surprised you set a 50% improvement with a triple stage filtering & heroic rinsing. Not to doubt you at all. This gives me more to look forward to.

Ever tried a carbon impregnated filter? Is this a possibility in our application?

Just wanted to chime in on this thread with a shout out for the after sales service from Klaudio on their cleaners. I’ve had an LP200 since last August and love it but in the past month the motor driving the LP started to whine and in many cases would not power the LP round. I contacted my dealer and he suggested I ship it back to KL. Concerned I didn’t want to do this without an RMA I filled in a form in the KL website and next day (although it was a holiday) I got an RMA and also an email for a free shipping label. Shipped it off and less than a week later got it back with new motor and rollers. All in all this is just what you expect in after sales service but is too rarely what you receive. So if you do spring for the Klaudio models you can be confident they stand behind them well

@folkfreak  That deserves it's own thumbs up.

My experience with ultrasonic cleaning is nowhere near as positive as the those reported by others. I had a choice between an Audio Desk Pro and a Loricraft PRC 6. I chose the Audio Desk Pro. The unit was purchased new from a dealer. 

The first album I cleaned was an original copy of Paul Simon's Graceland
lp that I could never quite get clean. I gave it one extra beep and awaited sonic bliss. I put the record on the turntable and gave it a good listen and found that nothing had occurred. I re-cleaned it with a Spin Clean, 60 turns clockwise in total, 60 turns counter-clockwise in total. I rinsed the Spin Clean fluid off with distilled water and cleaned this record again on my conventional RCM using Disc Doctor record cleaner and various brushes. A good rinse followed. The record now sounded good.

This is how all the records I cleaned behaved. Use the Audio Desk. Then hit the Spin Clean and my old Hanss Acoustic RCM. It seemed that the Audio Desk loosened the grub on the records but did not remove it. After 80 record cleaning cycles with the same result, I drove the 2.5-3 hours ( one way) to the dealer with the machine ( and a 4 liter jug of distilled water and a new bottle of Audio Desk cleaning solution) and asked the dealer what gives. The filter and cleaning brushes were cleaned and dried the day before my trip.

The dealer mixed the cleaning solution into the distilled water and filled the machine. He then cleaned a couple of records. The cleaning process was carefully observed and deemed okay. The records were played and the dealer announced that this is all I could expect. The machine was working as well as any he had seen.

I had cleaned the filter and brushes several times before I went back to the dealer. I changed the distilled water and cleaning solution several times as well in case the machine was dirty from the factory. 

I went home and using a new batch of distilled water and Audio Desk cleaning agent I found that nothing has changed. So, by this time I have gone through 5-6 changes of water\cleaning fluid solutions. My impression so far is all  I get is more work going back to my old record cleaning machines to remove the grunge the Audio Desk loosened but did not remove. After just over 100 records were cleaned on the Audio Desk, I drained the fluid and cleaned the rotating brushes and the filter. The filter showed very little debris (2 shakes with a pepper shaker). Much, much less than I have seen on other posts on the internet. My records are cleaned and rinsed before being cleaned with the Audio Desk, but after all the dazzling superlatives that I have seen used to describe the Audio Desk I am truly at a loss. 

I have considered sending it back to Germany with a letter describing my experiences, but I doubt that much would come of it. I think if I received an all okay in German I would ask Mr. Glass to just keep his machine as I would not feel I had lost anything but thousands of dollars and my pride  for being fooled so easily.

I should have purchased the Loricraft PRC 6 instead. It is exactly the same money. I know what a Loricraft or a Monks can do, and it is  a lot more than the Audio Desk can.

Caveat Emptor.

@regafan,

My 3 years plus with my AD machine ( I now look at it as an informative, expensive lesson), was that after pre-steamimg, I did get better results. after going to the DIY machine set-up, it’s clearly better than the AD.

For convenience, which the AD has in spades, for me, the high initial cost and the inability to be able to access the internals, the inability to be able to clean out the cavity properly, the high ongoing cost of ownership and so on makes it hard to recommend.