Cleaning a Record with Wood Glue

strumjoughlamps

Gagaryn said:

Read about that a few times but seems a hassle. I have a Knosti Disco Antistat and they work brilliantly. Make my own fluid 80% distilled water, 20% IPA and 5ml wetting agent for a litre - I use Ilford Ilfotol. Works out mega cheap and is as good as any commercial fluid I have bought. I recently replaced my Ortofon 2m Blue with a Audio Technica VM740ML which has resulted in much less surface noise even with fucked second hand records - pretty much all my vinyl plays now with zero pops or crackles.

How many hours has the 2m blue had?

I use Vinyl Revival, 2 sprays 2 cloths, works a treat.

RobDavies

I use a knosti record cleaner.  Works like a dream... but the original supplied liquid is a bit old now and I might have to look up a few "recipes"...

Gagaryn

strumjoughlamps said:

Gagaryn said:

Read about that a few times but seems a hassle. I have a Knosti Disco Antistat and they work brilliantly. Make my own fluid 80% distilled water, 20% IPA and 5ml wetting agent for a litre - I use Ilford Ilfotol. Works out mega cheap and is as good as any commercial fluid I have bought. I recently replaced my Ortofon 2m Blue with a Audio Technica VM740ML which has resulted in much less surface noise even with fucked second hand records - pretty much all my vinyl plays now with zero pops or crackles.

How many hours has the 2m blue had?

I use Vinyl Revival, 2 sprays 2 cloths, works a treat.

The 2m blue is 3 years old - hard to work out the hours, maybe 10 hours a week which make it about 1500 hours so it's far from new. Are you looking for one?

Gagaryn

RobDavies said:

I use a knosti record cleaner.  Works like a dream... but the original supplied liquid is a bit old now and I might have to look up a few "recipes"...

The recipe I used is worth trying - it's so cheap I don't even bother filtering and reusing - just chuck it after use. 25l of distilled water was £15 and 5l of IPA was £13  - both from Hexeal Chemicals with free delivery. The Ilfotol was £13 for 1l rom Amazon but I have enough to make 200l! It costs less than £1 per litre to make.

ICBM

On a related note, if you've got a CD or DVD which is scratched and won't play properly, you can polish it out with T-Cut.

I just got a quite rare (or I probably would have passed on it) album in a charity shop which at first sight was just a mass of scratches, and of course wouldn't read properly - ten minutes with some T-Cut and although it's still not pristine to look at, it now plays perfectly.

randella

Gagaryn said:

 5l of IPA was £13

That's a good price, decent IPA is usually about £5 a pint round me.

sorry, as you were

BloodEagle

I've used wood glue with great success on a few very very crackly records - completely transformed them. I generally stick to the knosti cleaner I have, though I dot use the supplied cleaning fluid as I found it left a powdery residue when you played the record after. I made my own fluid with battery top up water/distilled water and just a little drip of detergent/wetting agent so the water gets into the record grooves and flows off to dry to nice shine - works a treat, absolute minimum amount of ingredients so nothing nasty being put onto your records, and is so cheap to make I use a new batch every time I clean some records. 

strumjoughlamps

Gagaryn said:

strumjoughlamps said:

Gagaryn said:

Read about that a few times but seems a hassle. I have a Knosti Disco Antistat and they work brilliantly. Make my own fluid 80% distilled water, 20% IPA and 5ml wetting agent for a litre - I use Ilford Ilfotol. Works out mega cheap and is as good as any commercial fluid I have bought. I recently replaced my Ortofon 2m Blue with a Audio Technica VM740ML which has resulted in much less surface noise even with fucked second hand records - pretty much all my vinyl plays now with zero pops or crackles.

How many hours has the 2m blue had?

I use Vinyl Revival, 2 sprays 2 cloths, works a treat.

The 2m blue is 3 years old - hard to work out the hours, maybe 10 hours a week which make it about 1500 hours so it's far from new. Are you looking for one?

I would have one as a spare if I knacker mine.

richardhomer

Strikes me as a very OTT solution - akin to having an amputation to cure althletes foot...

randella

richardhomer said:

Strikes me as a very OTT solution - akin to having an amputation to cure althletes foot...

I've got an old picture disc of Pearl Jam's 'Ten' which was left to me and is very precious.  Can't decide whether or not to try this.  I think you're right though, it does seem a faff just for that copy of 'Slowhand' that I got in Oxfam for £1.99, clean microfibre cloth and a bit of warm soapy water did for that

strumjoughlamps

randella said:

richardhomer said:

Strikes me as a very OTT solution - akin to having an amputation to cure althletes foot...

I've got an old picture disc of Pearl Jam's 'Ten' which was left to me and is very precious.  Can't decide whether or not to try this.  I think you're right though, it does seem a faff just for that copy of 'Slowhand' that I got in Oxfam for £1.99, clean microfibre cloth and a bit of warm soapy water did for that

Picture discs are poor(er) quality anyway so cannot see the point.. !?

Gagaryn

randella said:

Gagaryn said:

 5l of IPA was £13

That's a good price, decent IPA is usually about £5 a pint round me.

sorry, as you were

Was thinking something similar as I typed that actually. Where do you stay, must be even more expensive than the Edinburgh pubs which is saying something. Right, I'm off out to my usual haunt to check prices - think most of the IPA type beers are around £4.30 and about a fiver for imported lagers. Guildford Arms if you are ever in town - a cracking boozer!

Gagaryn

strumjoughlamps said:

Gagaryn said:

strumjoughlamps said:

Gagaryn said:

Read about that a few times but seems a hassle. I have a Knosti Disco Antistat and they work brilliantly. Make my own fluid 80% distilled water, 20% IPA and 5ml wetting agent for a litre - I use Ilford Ilfotol. Works out mega cheap and is as good as any commercial fluid I have bought. I recently replaced my Ortofon 2m Blue with a Audio Technica VM740ML which has resulted in much less surface noise even with fucked second hand records - pretty much all my vinyl plays now with zero pops or crackles.

How many hours has the 2m blue had?

I use Vinyl Revival, 2 sprays 2 cloths, works a treat.

The 2m blue is 3 years old - hard to work out the hours, maybe 10 hours a week which make it about 1500 hours so it's far from new. Are you looking for one?

I would have one as a spare if I knacker mine.

Yeah, I'm keeping mine for emergencies - bought a new head shell when I got the new cartridge so it's good to go should i break something after the second bottle of wine! It also gave me the opportunity to easily A/B them both.

When you get round to needing a stylus change I'd consider looking for something different - the AT I got is massively better sounding than the Ortofon in every way - better imaging, better controlled bass - and far, far less noise from damaged records, which is what really blew me away. It's lower output though, volume on the amp needs to be about 10% higher for equivalent volume. It also needed about 40 hours running in - sounded very bright at first.

impmann

richardhomer said:

Strikes me as a very OTT solution - akin to having an amputation to cure althletes foot...

Not really. Its just using a different sort of medium to clean something. I wouldn't use it to clean every disc but for really bad ones there's nothing better, in my experience. I've owned a Moth record cleaning machine, which was a paint in the arse (too bulky and annoying to store, plus wasn't 100% successful). I've also had a few of the other wet cleaners and they tend to leave residues.

I've bought s/h records with dreadful background noise due to mildew or ingrained dust. No amount of IPA shifts that - I've tried. Sadly the Discog's descriptors rarely cover the audio quality of the records - and arguing the toss with the vendors is much like shouting at ducks.

I was skeptical until I tried the glue technique and now, I think its the most effective deep clean there is. Its a damn sight cheaper than replacing the disc and means that I can pickup charity shop records without fear of damaging my stylus. It doesn't solve every issue - scratches are still an issue although I know someone with a microscope, a very fine needle, a steady hand and the patience of a saint who can repair such damage (not 100% but a massive improvement).

As an aside, I wouldn't bother with picture disc as 1) they never sound very good and 2) its more likely to be wear than grot in the grooves, as they don't seem to last well.

But hey... don't like the idea, don't try it. But don't rubbish it til you do.

roberty

Yeah I can see the value in doing this on charity shop finds etc

I'm very picky about what goes under my needle, which kind of takes some of the fun out of it in a way :-)

thermionic

I am now almost certainly going to be trying this - on something not too precious first though!

strumjoughlamps

Gagaryn said:

When you get round to needing a stylus change I'd consider looking for something different - the AT I got is massively better sounding than the Ortofon in every way - better imaging, better controlled bass - and far, far less noise from damaged records, which is what really blew me away. It's lower output though, volume on the amp needs to be about 10% higher for equivalent volume. It also needed about 40 hours running in - sounded very bright at first.

I have only recently moved from the Red to the Blue after various demo's, it fits my system and listening.. cannot say I have noticed any noise issues..

viz

strumjoughlamps said:

Gagaryn said:

When you get round to needing a stylus change I'd consider looking for something different - the AT I got is massively better sounding than the Ortofon in every way - better imaging, better controlled bass - and far, far less noise from damaged records, which is what really blew me away. It's lower output though, volume on the amp needs to be about 10% higher for equivalent volume. It also needed about 40 hours running in - sounded very bright at first.

I have only recently moved from the Red to the Blue after various demo's, it fits my system and listening.. cannot say I have noticed any noise issues..

The cadenza series is nice ; you can pick up the cadenza black 2nd hand every now and then. Once you're on that ladder you can move to koetsu and start climbing. You actually don't need to spend that much to end up with a 5k cartridge! Like 800 quid if you buy and sell judiciously and are prepared to wait / snap up a bargain. 

Bellycaster

Thought I'd try this method to clean myself.




Please......Just get in the Shower instead!

randella

strumjoughlamps said:

randella said:

richardhomer said:

Strikes me as a very OTT solution - akin to having an amputation to cure althletes foot...

I've got an old picture disc of Pearl Jam's 'Ten' which was left to me and is very precious.  Can't decide whether or not to try this.  I think you're right though, it does seem a faff just for that copy of 'Slowhand' that I got in Oxfam for £1.99, clean microfibre cloth and a bit of warm soapy water did for that

Picture discs are poor(er) quality anyway so cannot see the point.. !?

If you had one that was as precious to you as this one is to me, then you would see the point. It's not about an audiophile arms race, I'd just like to play the disc from time to time.