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ultrasound record cleaning machine damaged my records

I recently purchased an ultrasound record cleaning machine. For reasons which I hope you understand I won’t name brands, because I am not wanting to make bad publicity to anyone but to discuss the matter. 

Previously, I had anather ultrasound machine which broke. I cleaned more than a 1000 records with it, with no concerns at all. The machine broke and, due to its steep price, I decided to go for a less costly solution. 

With the new machine I cleaned 7 records. One of themLeonard Cohen’s “New Skin for the old ceremony”. When listening to “Chelsea Hote”, I remarked a distortion that wasn’t there before. IT was clear on the low notes, like the instrument being out of focus or vibrating. I had some old very worn records which had that problem due to bad stylus. At first I started to think that there was a problem with the stylus of my Lyra Atlas. So I went to another version of the same album I have at home, to check if there was a problem with the stylus. Clean passage. No problem at all. 

As on the previous cleaned record I noticed a similar problem, not so apparent, I decided to clean the second version of the LP on the new machine. Playing it i heard  the same distortion on the same music. Checking out all the 7 records I cleaned, I heard issues on all of them, some less apparent ( the mono ones) and some more appparent. 

I couldn’t believe it but the new machine was damaging my records. 

The combination of my atlas and my SME 312 arm gives some “needle talk” - music heard when with everything muted you put your hear next to the stylus on the record. Doing it, I heard the same rumble distortion that was being amplified by the system. 

 

I used distilled water (not a new one but one which was opened for the previous machine) but it was clear clean. I put the exact amount of surfactant liquid on the mixture of distilled water. I kept all the operating instruction rules. I don’t understand what is wrong, but the fact is this machines damages the grooves on the record. 

 

Does anyone had this problem before? Any help provided?

 

Note: I already contacted the dealer who sold it  and I am going to see him next week. It is a very good a solid dealer.  It I’d like to hear your opinion. 

 

Best regards,

128x128pfmaudio
geof3
1,129 posts
 

The Audio Desk units can be repaired. It’s the pump that dies. I’ve done it. It takes some doing and a bit of creativity, but it can be done. There are several threads here on Agon discussing the procedure.

noromance's avatar
noromance
9,766 posts
 

Agreed. I always run the record through the SpinClean (with only distilled water) after the US.

To me, if you are using any chemistry, you should rinse.

larsman's avatar
larsman
1,926 posts
 

I don't know what you got, but some of those more inexpensive ultrasonic machines are not made for records but rather for things like jewelry.

I bought a DeGritter about 3 years ago and have cleaned thousands of records in it and it still works like a champ. 

I wish you luck in finding a good solution. 

dogberry
646 posts
 

The OP states 40kHZ and 60W output. The Humminguru website states output is 45W. Maybe it isn’t a Humminguru?

I can understand the reticence about publishing the brand, but the worst of all worlds is to allow a brand to be falsely suggested as the culprit. Maybe the OP would simply say it isn’t the HG, but something different if that is indeed the case?

pfmaudio's avatar
pfmaudio OP
19 posts
 

Following my last post, i made more experiments. Cleaning a récord using the old bottle of distilled water gave all the problems I reported before. It seemed the problem was with the distilled water. However, having courage to eventually destroy another good record, I put to wash a new record, 180 g, of JamesTaylor “sweet baby james”, which I have 3 records. I used the new distilled water and two drops of the cleaning fluid, as recommend by the brand. After a careful glistening, I remarked lost of focus and quality. On the 4th music, steamroller, it was clearly noticeable the distortion on the electrical guitar. 
I rest my case, I don’t want to ruin more records. This machine does ruin the grooves. I decided to send it back to the seller and have my money back. There must be a problem somewhere, but I don’t  want to know anymore what it is. 
A machine like this is supposed to clean our precious records and not to destroy them. With the audio desk the problem was the pump but everything was ok. My fight with audio desk is the vulnerability of the pump and having no solution to replace it. Even 1/2 price for the replacement is a lot of money. But it was very trusty and never ruined anything. 
by the way the machine in case is a HummingGuru. I will let you know what will be their answer to the problem. 
best regard and thanks for your time and help. 

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