Tweaks such as demagnetizers ionizers for lp's

George, glad to hear yours doesn't overheat. Paul even replaced our on/off switch and it still does, probably a short circuit in the coils... cheap POS!

"Close" means as close as you safely can. A magnetic field obeys the rule of inverse squares, so the closer you get the stronger the effect. I let the backs of my fingers brush the object being treated, so barely a cm away to start. Keeping the LP in a sleeve to prevent scratching is wise.

Moving "slowly" for us means:
- circling above the object at ~4-5 seconds per revolution, and
- receding from the object so that it takes ~15 seconds to get from ~1cm to ~1m.

Paul just mentioned another trick: start with the POS flat (parallel to the object) but gradually/steadily tilt it as you circle and recede, such that by the time you're ~1m away it's "aimed" at ~90 degrees to the object. This is another way to weaken the magnetic field relative to the object, so tilt it SLOWLY. Chanting your mantra is optional. ;)

Pradeep & Peter, we do both sides though I'm not sure why. My guess is that it's less a matter of "sides" than that repeating the procedure doubles the odds of affecting any given molecule. I haven't compared results vs. doing just one side but I don't care since it costs me no useful time. I generally multi-task, demagging one LP while the Loricraft is vacuuming another. Demagging doesn't steal many useable minutes from my otherwise thrilling life.

We demag discs just before we wet clean, on the untested hypothesis that reducing magnetic attractions might aid the cleaning process. That's speculative but if we must demag sometime, why not then?

This topic is really quite interesting, and I am trying to brush up on the physics of it. One further bit of advice that I came across elsewhere was to be sure to turn on the demagnetizer when it is well away (>3ft, according to one source) from the object to be demagnetized. Then bring it in close and do as Doug describes. One source said to move the demag away from the magnet "slow, as molasses in January". I presume the author meant January in a cold climate.

So the contrary experiment would be to deliberately use the demag incorrectly so as to magnetize the LP (in theory; if that is possible). All sources warn that incorrect use of a demagnetizer can result in magnetization, if that is a word. Magnetizing a demagnetized LP should make it sound "bad", if what one is hearing is actually due to magnetism. It would make for an interesting double-blind experiment. Moreover, one could respond to any non-believer that the reason they did not hear a big improvement after demagnetizing is that they did not do it right.

Doug's directions and everything else I read about moving the demagnetizer away from the object slowly, etc, make me wonder about the Furutech. Isn't the Furutech like a big pancake maker? AFAIK, you insert the LP into the Furutech, turn it on, then remove the LP after it is "cooked". The Furutech does not effect a gradual change in physical distance between its plates and the LP surface. Perhaps instead it is programmed so that its field strength starts high and slowly is reduced until the demag process is completed, thereby effecting the same thing as physically moving a demagnetizer of constant field strength.

Lew, your guess as to how the Furutech might function is what I've always assumed. Building an electro-magnetic field generator that fades to zero over a short, timed cycle would be easy of course, especially for $1,800. ;-)

From the object's POV, there's no way to distinguish between the distancing of a fixed-strength field (by the handheld POS) and the attenuation of a fixed-distance field (by the pancake maker). As in astrophysics: is that apparently dimming light source (aka, a "star") actually weakening or is it just moving away from me? Unless we measure Doppler effects we cannot know. For the object, the question of distancing vs. diminution has no meaning except to demonstrate relativity.

Dear Doug, You and Einstein. I knew it.

Hah! More like Qfwfq (Calvino's little protagonist in 'Cosmicomics').

"One day Paul and I were sittin' on a light beam..."