dbg@ihldt.UUCP (07/07/83)
395 albums were submerged in a flooded basement when the rains came to Chicago. Never mind the furniture, tools, appliances, stereo, furnace, hot water heater -- they are all replaceable. I recommended peeling away the jacket and sleeve and washing the records in warm water. Replace the jacket and sleeve with blanks and relabel them. It is apparently not that simple. I am told (by the unlucky owner) that they (albums) will not respond to any such treatment. Terrible noise comes from the grooves. Any suggestions for restoring them?? ihldt!dbg
edr@teklabs.UUCP (07/08/83)
When my family moved to Nigeria in '65 for two years, we had a similar problem. Apparently, there was a fire on the ship carrying our sea freight, which included the stereo and all our record albums. The captain flooded the hold with sea water to extingush the fire, and when we recieved it, there was a distinct water line across the middle of the (large) crate. We set about the task of repairing the water damage. Fortunately, the stereo was packed on the top of the crate and was unharmed, but the records were near the bottom and we peeled off the covers, made new blank covers, washed off the records with soap and water (we didn't have access to comercial blank covers or Discwasher[TM] in the middle of the back bush country of eastern Nigeria), modified the turntable spindle to run on 50 Hz and found the records to be in excellent condition. All we had effectively lost was the informative value of the album covers. I suspect that your friend may have damaged the records while cleaning them, perhaps with an abrasive cloth. If another good cleaning doesn't fix it, he may be out of luck. Then I would suggest he take the insurance loss and replace them. I know that's alot of albums to replace, but remind him that material possessions are secondary in the cosmic spiritual matrix of time-space, and only of fleeting interest in the eternal plan of the Divine Universe. I'm sure he'll be consoled. As a post script, we finally lost all of our things in the Biafran civil war in '67, sad irony. But it was still nice to enjoy the music while we were there. Ed Reuss teklabs!edr
wm@tekchips.UUCP (07/18/83)
I, too, had many, many albums damaged in a flood, about a year ago. The paper and cardboard of the jacket/liner had deposited into the record grooves and just would not come out. My plea to the net was answered, and I wrote off to Old Colony Sound Lab (usually advertised in "The Audio Amateur" in Petersborough, New Hampshire). They have two products, an anti-static solution which helps the particles come out of the grooves, and a "facial" which gives the record a deep cleaning. Both products work great, are moderately priced (read extreamly cheap compared to the highway robbery of most record cleaning products). I now regularly use the anti-static spray on all my records, even the ones that didn't get wet. Wm Leler tektronix!tekchips!wm