Good Quality Distilled Water???

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.

Lugnut, thanks for piping in with an informed opinion.

Everyone,

As to the claims of RRL about how many times they deionize, it doesn't really matter to me 'cause I do hear a very perceptible improvement using RRL products. For a long time I used a home brew using store bought destilled water and based one of the oft mentioned DIY formulas (I do believe they are better than nothing) because I too was sceptical of what I thought was high priced snake oil. After reading AlbertPorter's post offering to give someone a sample to try, I decided to take a change and order a single bottle of the Super Vinyl Wash. I was totally convinced after re-cleaning and playing half a dozen or so of my LP's.

I still use my home brew first on those really grimy used records I bring home. But all of my records get a RRL wash and rinse before going into new sleeves.

Crap, Lugnut said it before, this is beating a dead horse. AGAIN.

I have to agree with the RRL camp.

I also tried many different things, and none work as well for me.

I also tried them based on recommendations of Patrick, Doug, and others here.

I also have learned that there are people on this forum who have much more patience to try many more processes than I am willing to try.

So, to sum it all up, Patrick may have the most anal cleaning process in the world, but damn if it don't work good! I use it on any "rare or expensive" album that I have. I use about 3/4 of the process on the rest.

And since I started doing it his way, damn if my albums don't sound better.

So, I gues what I'm tying to say is you can try all of the options that are out there, or you can take the advice offered, and try it first. It may save you a lot of aggravation, and again I'll testify to the fact that it does work, and well.

JM2C.

Joe

Actually, I did try Holy Water but found it produced too much static.