Just to clarify my previous posts, the question was about garage sale vinyl. Keeping that in mind and having tried very hard to acquire vinyl at this type of venue (I have since given up because the time spent exceeds the value received) I have purchased albums which didn't come clean using commercial cleaners. For the record (pun intended) I clean most of my vinyl with disc doctor followed by a deionized h20 rinse, gruv glide and protective sleeves.
I clearly recall buying three Jimmi Hendrix discs that had no inner sleeves but otherwise looked salvageable. There appeared to be hard spots deposited on these discs. Commercial cleaners only broke down the surfaces of these spots and smeared whatever was disolved on the rest of the album surface. It was only through several washings with pure denatured alcohol that the matter was removed. I estimate the number of cycles to clean these records at about ten apiece and each of these cycles required scrubbing, not a mere wipe-down. I was very careful about cross contamination and used old discwasher brushes for the process and washed them in deionized water and rinsed with alcohol between cycles. Eventually I applied the last h20 rinse and used my vacuum machine, applied gruv glide and auditioned the finished product.
The finished product was as good as a freshly opened, factory sealed LP, with even the run-in groove being silent. These records proved to be worth the effort and the RISK. Without the last ditch effort to clean these rare pieces of music history they would have been tossed in the trash. The jackets are perfect and I have since bought junk copies just for the inner sleeves (white) to keep the history accurate.
Remember, the post was about garage sale vinyl, not the care and feeding of your average audiophile's vinyl library. To the nay-sayers, please go buy a junk piece of vinyl and try it. Then post your experience.
I close by stating that I would rather have melted these discs in the attempted process of clean-up than cross contaminating my stylus.
Happy listening,
Patrick
I clearly recall buying three Jimmi Hendrix discs that had no inner sleeves but otherwise looked salvageable. There appeared to be hard spots deposited on these discs. Commercial cleaners only broke down the surfaces of these spots and smeared whatever was disolved on the rest of the album surface. It was only through several washings with pure denatured alcohol that the matter was removed. I estimate the number of cycles to clean these records at about ten apiece and each of these cycles required scrubbing, not a mere wipe-down. I was very careful about cross contamination and used old discwasher brushes for the process and washed them in deionized water and rinsed with alcohol between cycles. Eventually I applied the last h20 rinse and used my vacuum machine, applied gruv glide and auditioned the finished product.
The finished product was as good as a freshly opened, factory sealed LP, with even the run-in groove being silent. These records proved to be worth the effort and the RISK. Without the last ditch effort to clean these rare pieces of music history they would have been tossed in the trash. The jackets are perfect and I have since bought junk copies just for the inner sleeves (white) to keep the history accurate.
Remember, the post was about garage sale vinyl, not the care and feeding of your average audiophile's vinyl library. To the nay-sayers, please go buy a junk piece of vinyl and try it. Then post your experience.
I close by stating that I would rather have melted these discs in the attempted process of clean-up than cross contaminating my stylus.
Happy listening,
Patrick