Results from Beta Testers of New Formulas

Dan_ed,
So far, I'm not seeing any gunk on my brushes, however I am seeing more "dry fuzz" after a cleaning session on the velvet portion of the vacuum arm tube( VPI 16.5). More stuff is getting sucked out of the vinyl.
This, the lower amount of dust accumulating on the stylus and the shinier surfaces lead me to conclude that records are just "darn cleaner".
I do still have clicks & pops that aren't disappearing with some of the LPs, but some are definitely gone. Background groove noise is reduced, resulting in apparent increased dynamics.
I've got enough left to clean about 3-4 more LPs, so I want to take my time and look for the best candidates...

Sean, welcome back from your vacation. It's always nice when friends return home.
Cheers, Spencer

Hi Sean,
I'm not sure why you addressed that to me. I'm no chemist, so engaging me in a theoretical discussion of surfactant behaviors would waste my time and your brains! Confused here, as usual...

After doing about a dozen discs, the Last brushes I'm using show absolutely no discoloration. Better yet, my styli (two vinyl setups) stay clean as a whistle.

Put me down for a gallon, too, Paul. This stuff is dynamite. Although it's a bit depressing to look at 3,000+ Lps and think what's ahead :-)

TALLYING THE RESULTS & ULTRA-PURE WATER

Hi everyone,

So far, 10 beta testers out of 20 have reported their results. They are: Brashgordon; Thafler; Jeffloistarca; Slipknot1; Lugnut; Nghiep; Jdodmead; Jphii; Sbank; and Dopogue. I think it's fair to say that they have reported very good results with the 2-step process. Thank you, guys, for your testing and for providing us all with your results. I guess at this point, I'm fairly encouraged to open a commercial account here on the 'Gon and make the formulas in the 2-step process commercially available.

I'm thinking that for 'Goners who wish to buy the concentrate and add their own distilled or ultra-pure water, I'll package the formulas in your choice of 4 oz. amber glass or 8 oz. Nalgene containers. Because the concentrate will be formulated to be diluted 7:1, the 4 oz. isn't as ridiculous as it might seem on first blush -- 4 oz. will make 32 oz. (one quart) of ready-to-use formula. Of course, 8 oz., once diluted, will make twice as much -- 64 oz., or a half-gallon.

Bob at AquaFX, a division of Aqua Engineering & Equipment, Inc. (telephone: 407-599-2123 or 877-256-3467), has kindly given me much of his time over the past couple days. He also had his engineering department do an analysis to make sure the ultra-pure water would be safe for vinyl LPs. Their conclusion is that ultra-pure water is only aggressive with LONG TERM contact; it is very safe for short term contact, such as the 1 minute or so the cleaner formula (step #2) is on the vinyl.

Therefore, I have purchased AquaFX's Barracuda unit ... a 4-stage reverse osmosis and deionization unit. Here's the link:

http://www.aquariumwaterfilters.com/RODI/Barracuda.html

I will make available to 'Goners the cleaner formula in a ready-to-use, diluted with ultra-pure water. Ultra-pure water, and the ready-to-use ultra-pure cleaner formula, may be safely stored in plastic containers which are food storage-safe; e.g., PET, LDPE, MDPE, HDPE, and Nalgene. I'll ship the ready-to-use, ultra-pure cleaner formula in 16 oz. and 32 oz. HDPE squirt bottles.

There's no point in making the enzymatic formula with ultra-pure water. The enzymatic contains several complex molecules, and is too much of a "soup" to benefit from ultra-pure water. The concentrated enzymatic should be diluted with distilled water. Thanks to Psychicanimal for suggesting that I look into making the cleaner formula (step #2) with ultra-pure water.

Currently, I'm sidetracked with an appellate brief due in the Michigan Court of Appeals this week. (Now there's an audiophile speaking for you -- my real work is "sidetracking" me). But I hope to be up and running in a week or so, and I'll have pricing information available then, too (I promise it will be affordable). The products will be sold under the "Audio Intelligent" brand name, here on the 'Gon.

This has been a group project of sorts from the beginning, with the beta testers literally having the collective power to veto this project. So if anyone feels that I have not fairly summarized the feedback, or if anyone dissents from the intentions expressed above, please feel free to speak your mind.

Thanks, everyone.

Best regards,
Paul Frumkin
(302) 836-0453

Some observations from using Paul's formula on about a dozen records:

First, A/B comparison of cleaning formulas is clearly inherently difficult - you can't ever make it dirty again and try the other cleaner. Using one cleaner on one side and another on the the other also doesn't work as the sides can be as different as night and day. The approach I took was first to use the cleaner on records that were already cleaned with my home brew and/or RRL super vinyl wash (I usually double clean but not always) and then to try it on uncleaned records. For the first test, I used records which still had some evidence of noise after cleaning.
Results:
First, I can say that this is not a miracle cure for your noisy records. Of 6 records all showed some improvement but only one showed more than the roughly 5% (slight) improvement that I would expect with a second cleaning. This may not be due to inadequacies of the cleaner as much as the fact that the records were already cleaned as much as possible. One record seemed to show a much more noticeable improvement in overall quality and dynamics. Again, it is difficult to assess this as you can't flip back and forth between the before and after and I tend to get so into the music that I forget I'm supposed to be listening to the sound but there seemed to be less "whoolyness" and much more focused sound.

I next tried cleaning several uncleaned, used records with the solutions. The result was excellent but again, I cannot say whether it would have been better or worse with RRL.

A couple of other observations - The enzymatic cleaner smells like the stuff I used to use on my contact lenses for overnight cleaning. You can't clean contact lenses with a few minutes immersion in cleaner and I wonder if the same is true for records. (and the contacts have only accumulated crud from one day, not 50 years!)

The cleaner also seemed to clean finger prints in the dead wax better than other cleaners. Finally, I liked the flow and dispersion over the record better than RRL fluid which seems to bead up on the surface. I know that the RRL people say that this helps "lift" the crud out of the grooves but I prefer to have the fluid get down in the grooves and let my 3hp custom record vac do the "heavy lifting" - it can practically suck the label off so there is no need for the fluid to do lifting.
In conclusion, I would purchase this product if reasonably priced to have an alternative to my current cleaners. My results suggest to me that alternative formulas and record cleaning strategies may work better on different records with different problems. No harm trying as many as I can. As for the potential of record damage - I'm not too concerned as my 50 year old ears will probably degrade far faster than the vinyl.
Paul - thanks for the samples and your contributions to record cleaning efforts