FCFIFRAGA%CIUC2.UC.RCCN.PT@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (FRANCISCO AMARAL F FRAGA) (09/19/90)
A friend of mine has a good professional cleaning machine (vaccum type). I would like to use it, but no one sells good record cleaning fluids in this country nowadays. Because this liquids are usualy extremely flamable it is quite difficult to import them, but our chemmical lab has lots of solvents and cleaners and I could easily made it, if I knew how. ( I want to clean my records, not to solve them). If someone has a good formula (please state if has been tested ) plese e-mail it to me. I have been told that destilled water and alchool with a few drops of a wetting agent will do the job. What do you think about? -------------------------------------------------------- Francisco A. F. Fraga Dept. Physics Univ. Coimbra 3000 Coimbra PORTUGAL tel. 351-39-34668 fax 351-39-29158 FCFIFRAGA@CIUC2.UC.RCCN.PT
bill@uunet.UU.NET (Bill Vermillion) (09/20/90)
In article <6427@uwm.edu> FCFIFRAGA%CIUC2.UC.RCCN.PT@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (FRANCISCO AMARAL F FRAGA) writes: >A friend of mine has a good professional cleaning machine (vaccum type). >I would like to use it, but no one sells good record cleaning fluids >in this country nowadays. Because this liquids are usualy extremely >flamable it is quite difficult to import them, but our chemmical lab >has lots of solvents and cleaners and I could easily made it, if I >knew how. ( I want to clean my records, not to solve them). > >If someone has a good formula (please state if has been tested ) plese >e-mail it to me. I have been told that destilled water and alchool with >a few drops of a wetting agent will do the job. What do you think about? I recall reading that that is what all the pre-mixed solutions do. Make sure that the alcohol contents is not over 25% in the final solution. There needs to be enough to disolve any residual oils, and much more would probably only hasten the leaching of the plastic. Water, being the universal solvent, is a good pairing with the alcohol. And the wetting agent makes sure the water will penetrate to the bottom of the groove. When the cheaper units first hit the markets about 10 years ago (eg VPI and Nitty Gritty while the Monks was still way over $1000) one of the reviewers in one of the trades, and I think it might have been Audio magazine, suggested using 1 quart of 100 proof vodka to 1 quart of water - but I'd be sure to test it on something that was not important before trying it. -- Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP
chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org (09/22/90)
Torumat contains no alcohol. It also costs $15 for 16 oz. $80 for 1 gallon. Ouch. You have to weigh that against the worth of your vinyl. (Alcohol leaches out the plasticizers, makin records brittle). In case there's still a US audiophile out there who's been in a coma this past year, mainstream classical vinyl is close to extinction in the US. I called around several stores in LA purporting to be purveyors of the plastic stuff and the largest one had 2,000 discs in stock. They all said that after current stocks are gone - that's it. Of course there are places that sell audiophile quality stuff but the range of music is severely limited and even then you have to wonder what happens to supply when the pressing plants close (e.g. JVC). Anyone want to share their vinyl sources with the net? Or is that sort of information a jealously guarded secret in these dark days of the Twilight of Vinyl? If only we could bring back reel to reel - now that's real analog. The situation in Europe seems to be better. Could Euro-netters comment? The latest issue of Absolute Sound had a reader's letter recommending Gramex in London, in case anyone's going to London on vacation anytime soon. A sensible approach (fiscally speaking) would seem to be to clean only when the record seems real dirty. For everyday use rely on a carbon fiber brush such as the Hunt (quality product Made in Great Britain - oxymoron? Just a quip, just a quip. Flame off anglophiles.) I just got a Hunt and recommend it highly. The carbon fibers drain off static so your record isn't a dust magnet after cleaning. Still, Enid Lumley recommends Zerostating after the Hunt but I haven't found this to be necessary. She also recommends a squirt of Stylast on the (surprise) stylus before each play. She claims Stylast improves the sound as well as protecting stylus and record. Haven't had a chance to try this yet - could we have comments from Stylast users? -- ray