Tweaks such as demagnetizers ionizers for lp's

Dan I will look into it. For the longest time I associated mistracking with the distortion I was hearing. I took this record to the local audiophile shop. It was the new 200 gram Stowkowski Classic Reissue, track was Smetana the Moldau. He put it on and I heard the same distortions I heard at home. The he said, "wait a minute" He proceeded to put the record on the Furutech demag. Moments later, back on the table, distortion gone, period. It was a revelation to me. The strings sounded natural, cymbals sounded better, horns sounded better, piano sounded great. It was like a veil was lifted. The thing I do not like about the Furutech is the cost and the bulkiness of it. It sure did do good things, great things to vinyl playback.

like Syntax, i have the Acoustic Revive RL-30 MkIII disc demag unit. i also have the Walker Talisman, a RTR tape head demag unit, and also a Tourmaline bead Hair Dryer device with some special tweaks.

all these devices have a positive effect on Lp play. easy to hear, repeatable benefits.

by far the item with the largest benefit is the Tourmaline Hair Dryer. unfortunately it also only has about a 15 minute window of full effect. so for a 33rpm Lp it won't quite last the whole side.

my personal opinion is that these effects are not related directly to the Lp itself being magnatized. it has more to do with the level of static build up on the surface of the Lp and how effectively any device neutralizes that static and for how long. possibly the degree of neutralization is inverse to the duration. i say this based on the reaction of my son-in-law the Phd in Physics who was doing some lab work for his Doctoral Thesis 4 years ago while i was messing with this stuff. his part of the lab work had to do with getting the proper readings from some test gear and he had found that by demagnatizing the glass surface of his test gear he could get more accurate readings. he said that the static held the micro-dust onto the surface of the glass and when de-mag'd the dust released temporarily and the readings were more accurate. his guess was that the same process accounted for what we heard.

he also said that if someone would fund the research he could possibly prove the guess in a lab.

I picked up a bulk tape eraser on e-bay some time ago just to satisfy my curiosity. Tried it on many vinyl records but could not discern any differences. I do hear an openness when using it on CD's though.

dan_ed and dougdeacon, can you describe how hand held powered demagnetiser is used in practice. I live outside usa (london, uk) and hope to import it or find local alternative. Does it have a trade name or other id since the website does not list this? Regards, Marc

The idea is to start with the device (powered up) very close to the object. Circle it s-l-o-w-l-y around the object while s-l-o-w-l-y increasing the distance. As the field slowly changes position and weakens, molecules in the object orient themselves randomly, just what we want.

The worst thing to do would be to start with the device close to the object and move it away fast in a straight line or power it off close to the object. That will leave the molecules in the object oriented in the same direction, just what we don't want.