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New Hobby Ultrasonic Record Cleaning

Purchased a cheap $199.00 stainless steel digital ultrasonic cleaner with a very nice record cleaning attachment off Amazon and I am having a blast.

This thing is heated, has a timer and an electric motor to rotate the records in the US tank. It is a 6L unit and it is made in China. Seems well built and it cleans records like a much more expensive machine.

I have cleaned a half dozen albums that are 40 plus years old and have only been cleaned with vacuuming machines and this thing is great. The albums I have cleaned sound darn near new and my wife thought I bought another new cartridge or phono pre-amp.

Can not recommend this type of cleaning system enough.

Rediscover those old albums.. if this thing lasts a couple of years I will be a happy dude. 
skypunk
skypunk's avatar
skypunk OP
499 posts
 
@antinn thanks for the productive input.

drained after 40 records and ran through a filter media to see results. Was quite surprised and I the Pro Ject Vac system and it leaves a bit behind.

I will just change water more frequently as I am not rigging a pump and filter.

My records are sounding awesome!
skypunk's avatar
skypunk OP
499 posts
 
@baylinor You are down in Austin eh?

Nice setup you have.
bjw54
25 posts
 
I have found that ultrasonic cleaning alone is not sufficient when cleaning very dirty records like the ones that you pick up at garage sales, flea markets and Goodwill. For those I first use my old trusty Spin Clean. A good scrubbing removes the real grunge and my $200 Happybuy cleans deep down into the grooves which the Spin Clean can't do. For cleaner records the ultrasonic works
great! I purchase a lot of Analogue production and MoFi including one step vinyl.
I am always amazed at the amount of debris that a ultrasonic cleaning pulls out
of these brand new high quality records!
Vinyl Rules!
slaw's avatar
slaw
23,673 posts
 
@bjw54,

Agreed. I also include my pre-steam method in that thread.
antinn
444 posts
 
@bjw54,

Your process of pre-clean first with a spin-clean (or vacuum RCM or manual in sink) and then final clean with ultrasonic is a time-tested record cleaning process when working with water-based cleaners.  

Large automated industry does essentially the same thing sometimes pre-cleaning with parts-washer and then ultrasonic or they have multi-bay ultrasonic units.  But, essentially, the process is the same:  pre-clean to get the big stuff and then final clean to get the small stuff (that is under the big junk)
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