I have been using a Nitty-Gritty machine since they hit the market in the early 80's and it was way better than using a Discwasher brush alone. I noticed that the NG brush left longitudinal scratches on the records that the stylus apparently does not pick up, but I was never happy with the idea of physical contact between the vinyl and a brush of any kind. I heard about US cleaners on this forum and that sounded like a better way to clean. There seems to be a couple of basic designs of ways to hold the records while in the water. Some have a separate vertical spindle that holds the rotator motor and it adjusts up and down and also swivels. Others attach to the sides of the US tank. I've seen some that hold 12 records at a time requiring a large US tank . I picked the Vinylstack device that holds 3 records at a time and a 6L US tank. I also built a vacuuming nozzle out of plexiglass that directs forced air along the face of the records. I use a wet-vac machine attached to my home made nozzle. The air flow is not high enough to suck the water off the records, but does speed up the evaporation process. I found that records dry in about an hour just sitting in free air and my nozzle dries them in about 15 minutes. It depends on how powerful of a wet-vac machine you want to buy. I use 1.5 gallons of distilled water with about 10ml of 91% isopropyl alcohol just to retard bacteria and mold growth in the water and a few drops of Dawn for a surfactant. I did a test for a point of diminishing returns on the time in the water and found that about 15 minutes seemed to work, so I clean for 20 minutes and dry for 15 so I can be cleaning records and drying them at the same time with 5 minutes to repackage clean records and get 3 more ready for the cleaner. You will get a "scum line" on the records when you remove them from the water. It's easy to remove the scum and when it gets pretty bad I change the water. At less than $1 pre gallon it's no big deal.
As for the sound difference after cleaning, it does what I need it to do. I have noticed two issues that I determined were due to dirty groves. The first thing I noticed was an increase in sibilance distortion and the second was a midrange graininess or gritty sound to voices male or female. The sibilance is of course a natural part of the human voice (the "s" sound) but what I noticed was a distortion or exaggerated sound that seemed to come from the speakers instead of the location (typically centered) of the singer. The US cleaning seems to have taken care of most of these two issues. It will not make a used scratchy sounding record sound new again. I suspect this is due to physical damage to the record surface from elastic collisions between particles and the stylus that leaves microscopic gouges in the groove surface that the stylus picks up when playing the record. I've got about $500 in the stuff not including the wet-vac. Considering I spent $250 on my Nitty-Gritty machine in the early eighties, $500 is not that bad and way less that a Degritter. I would do it again.
