I have a Kirmuss on loan right now. The Kirmuss method is as mentioned above, lengthy and involved. Therefore, i decided I wanted to see if the machine worked well with just distilled water and nothing else. At first, I had thought that the lack of drying would be the main issue, but this has proven not to be the case! The LP's don't get that wet, which really surprises me. The application of a good eye glass optic microfibre cloth seems to solve the drying issue. The problem is that the machine is not exactly a precision device, as such the potential for damage to the LP's as you insert and remove them from the spinner is considerable. To that, the results with just plain distilled water are nothing extraordinary. A generally clean record will come out a tad cleaner than before, but as Kirmuss points out, to really clean the grooves, one needs to do a multiple step process with multiple US insertions. This is a royal PITA. I am not even sure if the application of something like Gruv Glide will not give one the same result on a vacuum cleaned LP!
Then we have the heating issue, which has been touched on above, although I have noticed that the warmer the water, the better the result--to a degree. Clearly at some point the water is too hot and the machine needs to rest. Kirmuss doesn't believe in drying in the machine, which I think is his way of copping out and not figuring out a way for the machine to do this. BUT the bigger issue, as it turns out, is the risk to the LP on insertion and removal, get it slightly wrong and you can easily damage your precious vinyl...which gives me considerable pause and concern in regards to this machine!
Then we have the heating issue, which has been touched on above, although I have noticed that the warmer the water, the better the result--to a degree. Clearly at some point the water is too hot and the machine needs to rest. Kirmuss doesn't believe in drying in the machine, which I think is his way of copping out and not figuring out a way for the machine to do this. BUT the bigger issue, as it turns out, is the risk to the LP on insertion and removal, get it slightly wrong and you can easily damage your precious vinyl...which gives me considerable pause and concern in regards to this machine!