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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. 
128x128skypunk
skyscraper
831 posts
 
Antinn, Amazon carries the Tergitol 15-S-9 surfactant, but it’s $160.00 for 500 ml. It sounds like a better product from what you said, but that’s a bit pricey, for me anyway. I guess I’ll go for the Triton X100 instead at $20.00 for the same amount. It would have been nice to have the detergent factor the Tergitol product provides, but unfortunately one has to live within their means. Thanks for the recommend anyway.

Mike
slaw's avatar
slaw
22,044 posts
 
@8th-note,

www.thevinylstack.com


antinn
408 posts
 
@skyscraper,

How about $21.75 for a pint -  Tergitol 15-S-3 and 15-S-9 Surfactant | TALAS (talasonline.com).  What Amazon and the labs are selling is spectrographic grade with a nice brown bottle and label and a certificate of analysis (CoA).  Otherwise, they are the same, and the Talas source is what I specified in my paper.  Talas is re-packaging, but so is most everyone else - DOW does not sell Triton or Tergitol surfactants to the general public in small quantities.
orthomead
145 posts
 
@ antinn
Thanks for your concern.  Perhaps there is little to be gained and a lot to be lost by not going from 5% to 3% isopropanol.  I'll think I'll make that change. It's also cheaper.  Thank you.
fleschler
2,029 posts
 
@escscott482  I noticed that your link has the machine running at 40Khz oscillation rate.   The Kirmuss states that it is unsafe and doesn't work well to use smaller bubbles at Degritter's 120KHz rate.  Kirmuss uses a "70 KHz resonance to a standard 35 KHz sonic" rate.  I think AudioDesk uses 70KHz.  Who's correct?  I can afford $1,000 or $2,000 system but I tend to like the Kirmuss for safety and ease of use (I have 25,000 LPs and 7,000 78s, 12" and 10" records).  I have been using Disc Doctor with a VPI 16.5 (latter for 30 years-works perfectly as upgraded but doesn't clean every record like new, pops and clicks often remain on records previously played while dirty or with a dirty stylus by prior owners).  
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