A $349 record brush

For those of you who have decided to eschew TAS, while I completely understand and struggle with the implications at every renewal, here is why I have continued to subscribe.  Like life itself in order to prevent vertigo we need perspective.  If having resonable discussions in forums like this one provides a grounding, then rags like TAS provide a starry eyed perspective of what might not be practical in all cases, but perhaps what is possible in a dream.  Besides Mikey Fremer is now writing there and I do like to keep track of his musings.

With respect to the $350 brush all I have to say is: Oy Veh!

But $5000.00 on a power cable is reasonable. 

I still remember buying $349 5 ml High Fidelity solutions.Yes it’s crazy.

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/big-dust

This links Michael Fremer 's article comparaing the efficacy of several vinyl record brushes. 

The two that won his very un-scientific survey were brushes from Hart Audio ( Under US$100 ) and the Ramar. But it does appear that there are big differences in cleaning abilities. 

It was this article that launch the Ramar brand. On a seprarte video which I cannot find, the owner of Ramar, Rangel Vasev, bumped into Fremer in the corriodor of Munich Hi Fi show. He thanked Michael for allowing him to quit his daytime job and attend to  his small business full time. I had always associated Ramar with this video which I can't find. A young entrepreneur fulfilling his dream .... What's wrong with that?

I have pursed the high end for fifty years. In the beginning, all was done with a severely limited budget (while reading TAS... when it was a pamphlet). My speaker choices were ugly or even uglier, based solely on sound quality and cost. I learned over the decades and became more financially secure. In the last decade or so my decisions are easy because of my accumulated knowledge and far less cost based. My system sounds incredible and now looks beautiful.

So, when I read the article, I saw the beautiful wood and thought... now that fits with the aesthetic of my system. Great review. I’ll splurge. So, I bought one.

Apparently there is something I do not get about how to use the brush. Even after being instructed by the manufacturer... who was really nice on the phone. I can’t get it to do a good job... it just pushes the dust around. I thought maybe it was supposed to develop a charge and attract the dust. The manufacture told me it was carefully designed not to... there are special brissles to ground it... if I remember correctly. It is obviously me. There are lots of folks that love them... there was a long backlog to get one when I got mine.

I am sure I will give it a try again sometime. But for now I use Last with their general purpose cleaner to pull off the dust before playing an album. It performed the function so well it is an amazing.

The brush is beautiful, and looks nice next to my turntable. it cost a fraction of my cheapest interconnect... so, it does’t seem like that much of a stretch to have tried it. I am now retired, worked hard all my life (typically > 70 hours per week)... I am enjoying life... so it was a fun purchase.