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
mijostyn - The copper turning green is due to oxidation. 
Copper oxide is not green. The copper +1 oxide (Cu2O) is red and the copper +2 oxide (CuO) is black. Copper turning green is due to the formation of copper chloride. If it turns a blue or aqua color it is due to the formation of copper sulfate.

Yes all PVC has stabilizers to minimize degradation, even the PVC in LPs. They are not always 100% effective but do slow down the  degradation process. 

I do not think you have to be too concerned with degradation of PVC in LPs unless you leave them siting out in sunlight for days or heat them to high temperatures. Most LPs are a copolymer of PVC and PVA and with the added stabilizers and carbon black as a filler, the degradation of PVC is minimized.
barbapapa, are you kidding me? Look how PVC is made. If everyone here was so concerned about the environment we would all stop buying vinyl immediately and toss our turntables in the garbage. I'm more worried about what we will make our records out of once all the oil is gone:( The best way to keep your records clean is not to let them get dirty. I started collecting records when I was 13. I did not have my act together in terms of record care until I was 17 when I made a hinging dust cover for my TD 124. At about the same time I replaced the ADC Pritchard tonearm the table came with with an SME. I modified the ADC Pritchard by mounting an artist's brush head in the head shell.The idea came as a result of using a Stanton cartridge with the brush up front. Talking about skating force! It worked great except boy did it make static electricity. I got shocked every time I changed a record. So I wrapped the brush with fine copper wire almost down to the end and connected it to the green head shell wire which was connected to ground. I have been using a grounded record brush ever since. The older records had to be cleaned but remain noisy. All the later records have never been cleaned and are all as good as the day I bought them (except for the rare accident.) 
If you have dirty records I think the best way to clean them is an ultrasonic cleaner with distilled water. Unfortunately, a lot of pollutants inside a house are non polar molecules from cooking. Water as a polar solvent has a hard time dissolving these molecules without the help of Ultrasound so in every other type of cleaning machine you need something in the water that will dissolve them. I like isopropyl alcohol.
It is a relatively weak solvent but it evaporates quickly and leaves absolutely no residue. With a little agitation like in a Spin Clean it works fine. If people want to spend their money on all that other magic stuff that is their prerogative. Me? The only time my records are exposed to the environment is the 30 seconds it takes to go the three feet from where the record is removed from it's rice paper sleeve to the turntable, needle and brush drop, Dust cover down. Then of course back again to the sleeve.  https://www.sleevecityusa.com/Antistatic-Record-Cleaning-Arm-p/tac-01.htm
I no longer play LPs, but when I did I used clean room gloves to handle my LPs. The worst thing to try to remove from an LP surface are the 
proteins, amino acids, lipids and salts from your skin contact. If you handle your LPs carefully with no skin contact than the best cleaning method that I found was deionized/distilled water and an ultrasonic bath. If your LPs  have some fingerprints, Isopropyl alcohol can be used to clean them first followed by an ultrasonic bath in deionized/distilled water. 

As someone said earlier, all cleaning agents used on LPs leave a residue. It may not be visible to the naked eye but it is there. You want to try to minimize that residue. 

I mention deionized/distilled water as I found it to leave less residue than plain distilled water. For most people plain distilled water is fine.
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