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Best Record Cleaning Fluid

Greetings All,

I’ve spend the last few days searching and reading about record cleaning fluids for my cleaning machine (Okki Nikki).  Wow - there are a lot of options out there.  Many more than I originally thought.  Some real esoteric stuff that costs a pretty penny.  I’m currently going through my entire collection, cleaning it, listening to it and adding it to a Discogs DB.  Want to finally know how many I have and have a list of them.  But doing this has resulted in me going through cleaning fluid rather quickly.

So many options, so many perspectives on what are the best fluids.  What do you all say.  I understand that alcohol is a no-no for fluids, but I can’t find out if some of them include alcohol or not.  Currently using up the fluid that came with the machine, but no where can I read it if has bad ingredients.

The 2-stage or 3-stage cleaning systems are not going to happen.  I did get a bottle of Revolv that I was told was good, and use if for new high quality pressings (as opposed to those I bought in high school).

Anyway, would appreciate some perspectives on good quality record cleaning fluids that don’t bust the bank.  Thanks for keeping the sarcasm in check.

Happy Listening,

pgaulke60
ljgerens
157 posts
 
mijostyn - The bit about heated PVC making HCL is the funniest part.
The kinetics and mechanism of dehydrohalogenation of PVC is well documented in the scientific literature. I had the opportunity to study the surface chemistry of UV induced dehydrohalogenation of PVC many years ago using photoelectron spectroscopy. The dehydrohalogenation process can be induced thermally or via UV exposure and does produce HCl. That is one reason stabilizers are used in PVC.

Many years ago people observed their Monster Speaker Cable turning green through the clear PVC jacket. This was due to dehydrohalogenation of the PVC jacket producing HCl which reacted with the copper conductor forming copper chloride.


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cleeds
6,012 posts
 
ljgerens
Many years ago people observed their Monster Speaker Cable turning green through the clear PVC jacket. This was due to dehydrohalogenation of the PVC jacket producing HCl which reacted with the copper conductor forming copper chloride.
W-o-w! I never knew that! I used the original Monster Cable speaker cable in a biamplified Infinity 2.5 speaker system back in the very early '80s, so I had a lot of the stuff. It was a great sounding system but that is exactly what happened to the cable - I'd never seen anything like it before or since. The green color actually creeped me out a little and I threw the cable in the garbage.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,039 posts
 
Many years ago people observed their Monster Speaker Cable turning green through the clear PVC jacket. This was due to dehydrohalogenation of the PVC jacket producing HCl which reacted with the copper conductor forming copper chloride

I was always told that the crusty green powder was caused by the oxidation of the copper in the wire.  This was way before the days of oxygen free copper, (in audio cables anyway).
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
ljgerens, thank you for the explanation.The copper turning green is due to oxidation. PVC like siding which is exposed continuously to high temps and UV light has stabilizers in it. The PVC used in records is exposed to high heat once for only a short period of time and gets hardly any UV exposure because it spends the vast majority of its time in its jacket. The lead in the carbon black acts as a stabilizer but other than that I can find no evidence anywhere that PVC used for the manufacture of records has anything in it but carbon black. I would love to see evidence to the contrary. 
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