Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

Rsrex,
I think it can be debated whether plain distilled water is good enough for the steamer. It probably is. As far as the rince goes though, I think it's best to stay as pure as is feasible. I accidently splashed some of my reagent grade water on my bathroom mirror, didn't wipe it off and when it dried it left no trace of water mark at all. This little incident gives me the peace of mind that after a double rince the residual water after vacuuming is leaving as little residue on the surface as it dries as possible. Try leaving some of your RO water on glass to dry and see if it leaves a residue. If it doesn't it's probably as effective as the reagent grade for the purpose of cleaning records. Of course, the sonic effects of any residue left by water may be another area of debate.

Well, aren't we a little full of ourselves. St. Crem spreads the holy gospel of steam cleaning and gets his feathers ruffled when asked a perfectly logical question. Were you drunk? Your other posts have been well constructed with few if any grammatical or spelling errors. This little rant is chock full of them.

You stated that this process was important to collectors of valuable records like yourself who have upwards of 100,000 records. I am simply pointing out that the task of cleaning such a collection using your method, or any method for that matter beyond a simple dusting is beyond the realm of any reasonable human being. That means that the process is no more valuable to somebody with 100,000 than to someone with 500 since the former would never be able to implement it.

I also think my observation is valid that at some point the hours put into this thread and the hours spent cleaning could be better spent listening. There must be a reasonable balance between listening to dirty records and spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning records and talking about cleaning records.

If that pisses you off as it clearly has I fail to see the reason why. I appreciate your input and thanked you early on in this thread for bringing this process to my attention. I think my observations yesterday were valid, well reasoned, sincere, and in no way flaming you.

I apologize if it seemed otherwise but I must say your response was completely unexpected.

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Sonofjim (and Crem),
I understand your concern over contaminents, I'm just trying to put it into the bigger picture. First, keep in mind that any water passing through the steamer is undergoing a distillation process. After all, distillation is nothing more that condensing steam, isn't it? Now, maybe I'm doing this incorrectly, or skipping a step or three, but I use the steam as a rinse and then vacuum it off. Am I supposed to flush the record with "rinse water" after steaming?

As far as the mirror experience, there is one difference. I bet you didn't vacuum the mirror! Any rinse cycle goes through a vacuum cycle, (at least in my process) so there shouldn't be anything to dry on the surface. Nothing to dry should translate into no residue, correct? Now if the argument is that you can never get all of the water out of the groove, then I'll extend that argument to you can never truly get a clean record because some debris will stay in suspension, drying at the bottom of the groove.

I can clean 5 LPs in a about 20 minutes. Those LPs will provide about 200 minutes of (often vastly) INCREASED listening pleasure. That's a 10/1 ratio and a very worthwhile investment IMO.

Sure there are LPs that don't really "need" cleaning, so I go ahead and listen to them and hope that one day I'll get around to cleaning those too because I know that even those WILL benefit from the process.

What's the alternative? Is it to listen to "dirty" records? Records that have "issues" that could be rectified by spending a few minutes in the cleaning process? I'd rather spend a few minutes on those and have a significantly more enjoyable listening experience.

If you and your collecting acquaintances can afford to pay people to search out those rare vinyl gems then maybe you can afford to invest some money to pay someone to clean your records. This is one thing I would trust to very few people, but it would most likely be better than not doing it at all. Ha, I also like to work on my own cars. ;-}

All valid arguments Rsrex. Just stating the logic behind my particular regimen. More than one way to skin a cat.