Re: [ARSCLIST] SERIOUS cleaning cheap...possoble?

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I concur. The VPI is one of the most valuable pieces of gear in my studio.
Every record that comes through here gets cleaned before being played. For
good vinyl like a well-made later-era LP, the result is near-noiseless
playback. For bad vinyl, it helps as much as is possible.

Now, that said, for 78's, one of the few people I know who is truly expert
at getting whatever gems lurk in those grooves has a truly cheap and
old-school method. He cleans his 78's with a soft sponge and dilluted ivory
soap in his slop sink with good old fashioned NYC tap water. I think he
rarely if ever plays wet, preferring to find the ideal needle and preamp
noise-cancelling settings. I've also seen him do half-speed playback to very
good effect. I am not positive of the exact details of his cleaning method
but here's what I observed: record is rinsed under a slow stream of warm tap
water (not hot, not cold enough to make fingers cramp; sponge then applied
in gentle circular motion, both directions, making sure not to soak inner
label; after 30-60 seconds of sponge work, a thorough but slow rinse. Then,
here's the trick. He vacuums the record (I forgot this detail in a previous
post) with a special end-piece on his shop vac. I think he made it out of a
straight plastic pipe with a groove cut in it, covered with a thin layer of
velvet or chamois cloth -- something gentle enough to apply directly to a
record surface. This cloth gets rotated around the pipe so a fresh surface
is touching each new record and gets replaced regularly. All of this is the
same theory as the VPI. He's using a higher percentage of soap to use
soaping action to lift dirt as opposed to VPI's using wetting and
evaporation with a groove-depth brushing. Both methods vacuum off the water
and remaining crud, lifting it out of the groove bottoms when the systems
work properly.

Another source you might pursue is to track down Malcolm Addey in NYC. I
don't think he's elusive and he still seems quite active doing work for
Mosaic and others. I mention him because he did very fine work for Time-Life
in their Giants of Jazz series. This was pre-CEDAR and other digi-tricks. He
must have had mostly good metal parts and a good cleaning method. It would
be interesting to know what he did in the cases where he didn't have good
metal parts. To my ears, those records represent some of the finest examples
of re-mastering from 78's. The early digi-filtered CD's sound horrible to
me, although there are exceptions where engineers went against the grain and
were very conservative about applying so-called "improvements". Some recent
reissue CD's from 78's are much better because we seem to be getting back to
the idea that eliminating _all_ surface noise is a fool's errand, and one
man's "re-equalization for clarity" is another man's tin-eared disaster.
Anyway, if you do track down Mr. Addey, I'd be very interested to hear any
wisdom he passes along. There were also some aces of 78 transfer in the UK,
particularly whomever did the big Noel Coward box set from the mid-90's.

None of this is meant to discourage buying a VPI, by the way. I think it
will have a long, busy life in the hands of any serious shellac or vinyl
collector.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 12:01 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] SERIOUS cleaning cheap...possoble?


> Try this:
> http://www.vpiindustries.com/17.htm
> Different length tubes are available for the different formats.  They last
> forever.  Very high build quality.
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 10:03 PM
> Subject: [ARSCLIST] SERIOUS cleaning cheap...possoble?
>
>
> > Okeh...noted a thread about cleaning records (78?) on ARSCLIST, so I'll
> > try
> > asking this...
> >
> > I'm currently going through my collection to see what the heck I own,
and
> > what has and hasn't survived. These records have, for the most part,
> > stayed
> > in their milk boxes, usually in my basement, untouched for about 10-15
> > years...and then been stored again here in Oshawa. However, they have
> > accumulated dust (in sone cases plaster dust from a renovation) and
> > in some cases targeted by spraying cats. As well, they never have
> > been thoroughly cleaned since I owned them (and probably before?)
> >
> > So, given that I have about 40,000 78's in various stages of
> > dirtiness, and don't have access to anything resembling a
> > fortune (as well as sinks and racks for mass-production
> > cleaning and drying of 78's!)...what is the best way to
> > clean them (they don't have to be surgical-quality clean)
> > that is compatible with my limited budget and facilities?
> >
> > ...stevenc
> > http://users.interlinks.net/stevenc/
> >
> >