Spoke with Jim Pendleton (of AIVS) this morning. He was *great,* taking the time necessary to answer every one of my questions.
He first asked if I knew the cleaning history of the albums. As a control in my cleaning experiment, I cleaned an album I bought new, in 1970, and another of the same vintage, recently acquired from a local collector.
Jim listened to the symptoms (reported in the first entry of this listing), then asked about my technique (which followed the AIVS directions to a 'T'). He then suggested that the gunk found on my friend's stylus after playing my 'cleaned' LPs was very possibly mold release agent that had hardened over the years. [Forty years *is* kind of a long time...]
His recommendation was that I clean a second time. Apologizing for the use of extra solution, he suggested in future when cleaning LPs of this age or earlier, *two* consecutive passes of Solution 15 were advisable, followed by completing the regular sequence of chemicals and rinses to complete the cycle.
As a control for this experiment, he suggested cleaning one of the two 1970 vintage records with my friend's Loricraft to see if that does a better job. That, along with cleaning another LP of like vintage on the Loricraft --one that has *not* been cleaned on my VPI-- should give some insight into the efficacy of my particular VPI (Model 16, factory converted to 16.5 spec, with new vacuum motor) as well as comparing the Loricraft vs [my] VPI 16/16.5's performance.
When all this is done, I'll report back.
Thanks to everyone for their input.
Best,
David
