Record-playing Rituals?

I agree that some sort of manual cleaning, which might include the steam procedure Sean mentions but must include a velvet brush wet scrub, would be in order. I'm a little unclear on this, but since you talk about a 10" side, are these 78's, or another type of record not made of PVC? If they are shellac, I would think the solvents you used in machine cleaning them are probably responsible for any softened condition that might exist at this point. But if they are PVC, or not really softened chemically, then you likely just need to clean them a little more vigoruosly by hand on a flat surface, maybe with a solution that has some detergent component to it. A lot of the surface noise will stay I'm sure, but you should be able to play the records without accumulating gunk on the stylus.

These 10" LPs are not the typical softer vinyl we know but the stiffer, less yielding vinylite. The LPs are remarkably unworn except for the solvent use. Steam cleaning and brushing may be in order after the various VPI cleanings. My friend suggested pure mineral spirits added to water and fotoflo. Thanks for your suggestions.

(P.S. Honest ebay advertising would also have been helpful).

After 10 years of spending hours cleaning and scrubbing dirty garrage sales records, you will have to pay me to clean another. I stopped buying used records also, unless if they are spotless. I got too old to continue to be anal-retentive!

thanks guys

After an evening of listening, I'd like to come back to this thread. I still find, that some LPs profit immensely by my cleansing procedure described above both in sound stage and frequency expansion and some simply do not and sound washed out with pun certainly intended. I still do not know, why this is so, but I suspect it must be the vinyl, because those that do not profit, but actually lose in presence and directness are mostly very early stereo LPs. In spite of that, even with records of the late fifties early sixties the ratio of cleansing profit and cleansing detriment is still 4 to 1 in favour of definite improvement. Again, I find though, that in our hobby there are few definite answers and my suspicion of those who have found absolute thruth ( or absolute sound ) has certainly not diminished. To the contrary, it is fun to experiment and to discover..... Cheers,