Record-playing Rituals?

Just sharing my experience, confirmed by both listening tests and constant visual inspection of the stylus.

I guess the theories don't interest me as much as the results, and my records have never been cleaner. I can and do go for many, many sides without needing to do more than brush the odd cat hair off the stylus. I have not opened my bottle of LP #9 in months, and even my preferred DIY stylus cleaner isn't needed more than once every 6-10 sides. This tells me my vinyl cleaning methods are working.

If you prefer a solution that makes more sense from a particular theoretical perspective, go for it. Jyprez likes his DIY stuff, I like RRL. Hmm, we live only ten miles apart. Guess we could do a comparison...

I have become aware that I should provide an update to an earlier post that I made where I recommended using a couple of household cleaners (i.e. Dawn) as record cleaning agents as a precursor to using Record Research Labs fluids. I have since learned a great deal about record cleaning ingredients and the importance of avoiding ingredients which attack the plasticizers in vinyl, which certain additives (i.e. fragrance additives) will do. As such, I retract my recommendation of those products and apologize to anyone whom I may have misled.

I clean new records first with Last Power cleaner on both sides, then with Nitty Gritty fluid and vacuum it off with a Record Doctor II. Used records get the Audio Intelligent treatment. Before and after each play I run a couple of revolutions with a Super Exstatic brush. Before the record gets put away I zap it with a Ionoclast.

David: Recordings should be cleaned before playback. For years I used all the standard stuff;carbon brushes,wet cleanings,vacuum machines,etc. with mixed degrees of sucess.I experimented with most cleaning tweeks in print but none of them resulted in emotional nirvana. Of course that led to a sucession of changes:TTs,wires,pickups-my audio addiction was in fullswing.LPs had become a head problem and no one absolutely no one in print had the answer-at least for me. After the purchase of a Maplenoll air bearing TT in the early 1991, I became interested in air(that is forced air), as well as, inquiry into the nature of contaminates that maybe attracted to Lps. Over a lifetime, I amassed thousands of those black orbs that I now used as "experimental and control groups". My conclusion? Give Steam a try . Yes, you got it right STEAM. For years I have been pre-cleaning LPs with steam. The process is Simple and Safe and Effective. First, clean the record with a Lp cleaner of your choice , lightly scrub and vacuum with a VPI,etc. Next, take a handheld, household-type steamer with distilled H20--devoid of all attachments--build a full head of Clean Steam and let 'er rip gently over the groves followed by a second wet cleaning,scrubbing and vacuuming. Lastly, lightly steam again and vacumm dry.I strongly recommend using Lp cleaning liquids,such as Disc Doctor or Smart, but have found that homebrews can work just as well as the high priced spread. David 'an Thread Weavers ,Beware, do not use any other cleaning unit other than those hand held products easly purchased at BJs,Wal Mart or wherever for they do not create steam so hot as to damage a LP. And NO I can not assure you that every pop an click created at time of manufacture or thru use/abuse will go away. BUT I can say that after removal of all the gunk and molds you can extract more, much more information . The process also removes the "fingerprint" created by the use cleaning liquids. My steaming ideas were initially printed by Art Dudley in "Listner" and later Michael Fremer gave it a favorable recommendation in "Stereophile" - A blurb was also included in the year-end recommendations issue. So give it a try. Charlie

I clean each side with an Oracle Carbon fiber brush. I clean the stylus each session with a Denon ultrasonic cleaner. I neverlubricate the stylus. When I first purchase an album it gets cleaned with a homemade cleaning solution on a Nitty Gritty machine, I place them in new rice paper sleeves and place the whole package in a poly bag to form a dust seal.