Good Quality Distilled Water???

I suggest you use only holy water from the Vatican. It may be pricey, but you get a trip to Italy in the mix, and it'll clean the B'jesus out of those grooves.

Marco

I tried that Tvad, but that big block of ice just kept slipping off the LP and I couldn't get the lid closed on my VPI. This is one of the reasons I quit vinyl altogether.

Marco

Lugnut,
Hi Patrick. It's good to hear from someone with considerable knowledge on this subject. I just copied this paragraph from the RRL site I linked above,

"To achieve the proper base for RRL fluids, Weitzel designed and built a special copper distillery, producing distilled, quadruple deionized water. Distilled water as a base alone still contains many trace minerals which can be positively or negatively charged and attach themselves to the vinyl. Deionized water reduces the level of trace minerals in the reacted water, greatly reducing the amount of mineral contaminates on the record itself. Chemical labs have for years used deionized water in their work. Lab grade water is single stage deionized water, RRL is quadruple deionized. "

Brian Weitzel's explanation is virtually identical to yours. Distilled and quadruple de-ionized water is precisely what RRL fluids are based on, whatever the source.

Perhaps the difficulty and expense of de-ionizing is what makes the RRL fluids somewhat costly. OTOH, I find that very little fluid is needed to clean or rinse a side. I literally use just a quarter-sized patch of fluid per side on my RCM. Using more is counterproductive. It doesn't clean any better and it makes complete vacuuming more difficult. This seems (at least to me) a good testament to its purity.

Doug,

Let me say in more succinct terms that I believe RRL products to be the best available for vinyl cleaning because of the testaments from members like you and Albert. For sure, if RRL has a distiller that does what they say, they are using water that is as pure as it gets. Also, I don't want anyone to feel like I'm being overly critical of any manufacturer of cleaning products. Most work very well and a couple are outstanding. This topic is like rice paper record sleeves. They are labeled as such because the sellers know that if they call them polyethylene they would sell fewer. I've always admired anyone that goes to the furthest extremes in a effort do their best as RRL apparently does. I do take offense at opinions based on nothing but ignorance. And, for the record, every drop of water on this planet has been cyrogenically treated long, long ago, and far, far away. Marco, maybe you can make some IC's out of this resource. More outrageous things have been tried.