It's not the machine - it's the process. I've been using a Nitty Gritty 1.5 fi since the early nineties. Back then, I used Last preservative on all my new records, but not so much on used albums. I generally vacuum clean every 2 or 3 plays and attach a small post-it with the date to the corner of the inner sleeve. The NG has done a very good job by itself but on many older records (both my own which have been loved and cared for as well as used disks) have continued to have a lot of leftover ticks and pops that I figured are from normal wear over time rather than from dirt. Over the years, I have tried several methods of enhanced cleaning methods and solutions, but never found any that work any better than the standard N.G. process on these older records. The worst ones were from a batch of more than 4 hundred classic rock albums from the 60s that my co-workers dug up to give me as a retirement present that they had all dug out of their closets and attics. All were excellent records but all had so much noise that, after sampling several score, had not yielded a single listenable side. All that changed early this summer when I bought a grounded anti-static brush from Mapleshade. I know that Pierre likes to go over the top about the superiority of all his little innovations and tweaks, but it was only $40. and it looked like it might help me with some EMI-related issues I was having with my phono stage, as the brush is made from ultra-fine gage stainless steel bristles attached to a ground wire that plugs into an unused ground hole in the wall outlet. I thought it might drain some charges out of my wiring. As usual for Mapleshade, even the simplest things come with a 2 page direction sheet that got me to thinking about what actually happens to small particles in the grooves. Pierre suggests brushing the bottom side and the platter top before turning on the TT, then using the circular motion of the spinning disk to clean the side about to be played. Simple and obvious, yes, but then it went on to hype the usefulness all over the rest of the audio system to clean up charges everywhere. Most of the time, I let marketing hype go in one ear and out the other, but it did get me to imagining what actually happens in the groove. We all know that vinyl is easy to charge and really likes to attract junk and hold it magnetically until the charge is neutralized, but then, once the charge is gone, what happens to the dirt? Since they have a 30 day no questions asked return policy, I thought I would give it a real project to test his claims that the brush was a major breakthrough and not just another reord brush to add to my collection (Hunt, Audioquest, discwasher, et al). I grabbed a handful of random records from this collection and found several that I had never cleaned or played. I cleaned a couple of them with the Nitty Gritty and then brushed them with the new brush as directed and played them on my VPI SSM. There was no difference whatsoever to any other cleaning method I had tried and I was about to just pack it up to send back when I got inspired. I rebrushed both sides of the album that had just been cleaned and played and then reran it on the NG for a normal cycle. My theory was that if the Mapleshade brush design really did eliminate the charge by grounding it to earth, There would be no better time to vacuum it, since all the small particles would have their smallest possible attraction to the vinyl, before further touching and friction from use could reestablish the charges. I literally hit paydirt! This combination works so well that I have fallen in love with my record collection all over again this summer. I have tried it on hundreds of records, some being favorites that I had judged to have been "played to death" years ago and were consigned to my "hospital" shelf. All were dramatically improved in eliminating most ticks and pops, but also showed greater detail and silence between notes. As I stated above, I had never found a single disk from my "retirement present" that I could play all the way through without shaking my head at the poor record-care habits of the average American in destroying so many great recs. Now, though, I have not found a single side that is unlistenable - most sound like new. If I had to set a numerical rating to the difference, I would say that approximately %75 of the ticks and pops just disappeared as if the disks had gone to a health spa and come home rejuvenated. And, this 75% figure applies to the amount of cleanup heard after all other cleanup processes have run.
