"Cleaning" Vinyl Makes It Worse Not Better!

Add me to the voices saying that bad record cleaning is worse than none, but a good ultrasonic cleaner (with frequent changes of water) is excellent. I use an Audiosysteme box, but those are now a silly price - if I did not have it, I too wouod be a degritter or similar.

I always wondered why “quiet” is a virtue correlated with goodness when discussing vacuum based RCMs. I keep my noisy VPI in my basement workshop. When I clean records, I’m cleaning records, not listening to music. I’ve got a table radio in there for sports listening if warranted. It’s a vacuum cleaner; they’re supposed to be noisy. Quiet might mean weak vacuum. 

Now that the DeGritter Mk II is out, there might be used OG DeGritters on the market for a good price.... Mine will not be one of them... 

An ultrasonic cleaner is the best way that I have found to clean vinyl records. I built my first ultrasonic cleaner in 1979 and used it to clean over 1000 records with excellent results. With my spindle assembly, I typically cleaned 8 to 10 records at a time and the total process (cleaning, spin rinsing and spin drying) took less than 20 minutes for 8 to 10 records. All you need is distilled water and a proper surfactant in your ultrasonic bath. No need to spend a lot of money on an ultrasonic cleaner. A reasonable ultrasonic cleaner can be purchased on Amazon for about $200. 

A VPI 16.5 has never let me down.