[ARSCLIST] Acetate cleaning and storage best practices

[Eric Jacobs <ericj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While on the subject of acetates, I would like to know what others do with
respect to acetate cleaning and storage (beyond temperature and RH, which is
well documented).

Do people clean the center portion of the disc all the way to the spindle
hole?  Or just to the edge of the registration holes?  Or just a little
beyond the inner groove area?

After removing the PA, do you re-use the storage sleeves, or do you use new
sleeves every time?

If there's PA on an unrecorded disc side, I clean this anyway, mostly
because I don't want to contaminate the inside of the sleeve.  What do
others do?

When the labels have fallen off the disc center, I've seen these stored in
folded acid-free paper and then placed in the same sleeve with the acetate
disc.  How much risk of imprinting (the pattern of the folded acid-free
paper label holder) into the surface of the acetate?  Imprinting is a
function of pressure, but how much pressure does it take when an acetate
disc is stored for potentially decades without moving?  MIght it be better
to store the label perhaps attached to the outside of the sleeve rather than
in the sleeve with the acetate, although this may increase the risk of
separating the label from the disc?

Relative to imprinting, how loose or tight do you store your acetates?

Does PA have any protective properties?  Is there a situation where leaving
the PA on the disc is actually better than removing it?

Eric Jacobs
The Audio Archive