Getting and keeping records clean................

For very dirty records I use warm water with dishsoap and a very soft towel to dry them. A sponge works fine to clean the records. Towels are used to lay the record down to soak off the water. Cheap; recommended as the method by Last Record as well as Nick Gowan.

Once the gunk is cleaned off I just use the Last Record fluid with their applicator device as I posted earlier.

Wntrmute2 - I spent alsmost nothing on my RCM - just the cost of a crevice tool for my shop vac and some felt and double stick tape to adapt it for record cleaning. While I doubt it will outperform a Loricraft, I also think it will perform on par with the other similarly designed machines and I absolutely know from experience that it way out performs hand record washing.

With the Art of Sound, does one need to have a distilled water rinse?

Has anyone had the experience, with hand cleaning, of having the stylus becoming the final cleaner and eventually totally gunking up. I had to change cartridges-very expensive.

A VPI 16.5 is a must. It's up to you as to what fluid you use. I like the Disc Doctor. I've heard Record Research Labs is good. Also look into LAST record prservative. It's appled after you clean and dry your records. It chemically binds to the vinyl and prevents you stylus from gauging chunks of vinyl out of the record grooves. It's not cheap, but a must have. I've played records hunders of times with no wear, clicks, or pop. Also look into Stylast. You apply you've cleaned your stylus. Your stlylus gets super hot due to friction, in fact it momenralty mealts the groves as if goes by. Stylast prevents this. But you must be carefull you apply it to the stylus only. You don't want it travelling up the cantilever and gunk up thr works. Check out Last, Disc Doctor, RRL, the Zerodust sylus cleaner on the web. Good luck