Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

T: I certianly agree that a video is a good way to express steaming & I shall do one when my I.T. friends have the time & equipment to assist.

Readers: From the "paranoia" response I see that there is no concensus regarding leaching chemicals. I agree that maybe over-the-top for folks whom I suspect have limited collections (500 LPs or so), having little or no interest beyond the moment. But what about folks like me with 5,000 + LPs or friends that own 15,000 or more of the rarest LPs in the world. How about them? I have several friends (including me) that pay for music advisors to search the world for only the most significant recordings. The cost ranges $35 to $120 per LP to $1,100 per set US for certian recordings. Gosh, for the insidental collector paying 25 cents to a dollar per LP, frankly I would drop the thread & do what you please. But for the record collectors that oun & pay the big bucks for recordings, paying out $100,000 or more on playback equipment they express strongly to me any reservation on chemicals.

I would also suggest that if your Turntable performace is in the Mid-fi land , forget the thread and do what you want. Who cares with the exception of the fact that steaming with or without attachments is going to make a big impact on the listening experience. For the insidental record owner with a couple hundred , I understand your view. But, please understand that institutional collectors around the world have more of a stake in this because of the numbers game (100,000 + LPs).

Forgive me, but I have noticed a real gulf of opinion between Europeans who are "Green-Green" and State-Siders who are oh hum on chemical issues. I understand that I hope some posters understand they are on the oh hum side of the conversation.

I only hope that those of us that want to push the SOTA forward as far as steam cleaning regardless of numbers of LPs appreciates steaming is not for everyone, as is record care generally.

OK, for the small minority left my question remains " How do we get the chemicals removed/lowered in profile from Chinese made steaming units ?" Or do you throw caution to the wind become Oh Hum and steam w/o regard of the longer-term consequences ? Now that's the $64,000 question, pun intended. All the best.

I also believe that a double rinse with lab grade water is more than enough to remove with vacuuming any left over contaminates. The difference in the sound of steamed lps is what tells me that the surface of my lps are as clean as it gets.
I only use distilled water in my steamer not lab grade due to the fact of seeing what it looks like after being inside after hear up. If anything this water seems like it would do more harm than what could come off of any of the attachments.
I have accepted this as part of the process and i am going with it.
Like most things we have the last say in what we accept. And for now a am very happy with the results i'm getting with my vinyl collection steam cleaning with my method.

S: Enjoy & good night.

But what about folks like me with 5,000 + LPs or friends that own 15,000 or more of the rarest LPs in the world. How about them? I have several friends (including me) that pay for music advisors to search the world for only the most significant recordings.

I have to ask, do you also pay someone to clean your records?

If you spent 2 hours a day every single day cleaning records and took 10 minutes per record it would take over 3 years to clean 15,000.

If a typical record is 40 minutes long and you somehow manage to listen an average of 4 hours a day every single day it would take about 7 years to listen to 15,000 if you never repeated.

I do have a steamer and clean special records, but at some point the effort outstrips the reward. I find it impossible to believe that anyone would clean 5,000 records much less 15,000, and who can ever expect to clean 100,000 or ever listen to them.

I have probably over 3,000 myself but would never consider cleaning all of them. The time it takes to do so takes away from the limited time I have to listen. The amount of time spent in this thread on the minutia of the process is time wasted that could have been spent listening. I propose that you have become so eaten up with the process of cleaning that you have detracted from the joy of listening.