Re: [AV Media Matters] old phonograph records

[m.biel@morehead-st.edu]

>Moderators Comment:
>For the record I will allow 1 (as in ONE) rebuttal from Michael
>and that will be it unless there are some more useful, factual,
>and dare I say more FRIENDLY aspects to these postings.

Thanks, Jim.  Duane and I have had many exchanges and phone calls in
the past and I have learned to take his impassioned objections like
water without a surfactant off a duck's back.  But it is true that
many of the others on the list might not know that this didn't
bother me.  I expected it, although I thought I had included enough
disclaimers to avoid it.

I did this posting to be purely practical. I reiterated multiple
times that this advice was being given to someone with just FOUR
records to clean, and we do not even know what they were or for what
purpose the Alabama Dept. of Archives and History wanted to clean
these dirty records.  Perhaps they are just for VISUAL display!  I
would hardly expect that if they have only FOUR RECORDS that they
have (or will be getting) expensive specialized equipment to play
them.  If a quality transfer is the ultimate goal, I would suppose
that they are planning on sending the records out to an expert for
dubbing, and that person would be doing their own cleaning just
prior to the dubbing.   Otherwise, if there is a cheap Califone
lying around to play them, this cleaning will be good enough to
allow the records to be adequately heard without perhaps the added
benefit of luxuriating in the additional fullness and warmth of tone
that a microscopically detailed cleaning would bring out of three
Diamond Discs and a blue label Columbia on an instrument as fine as
a Califone (assuming that it is a late Califone with a stereo
cartridge that could play verticals--she hasn't yet asked us how to
play the DDs!)

The watchword of someone cleaning an item is: First, do no harm.  It
was important for this person to know that normally available LP
cleaners might do harm to the Columbia.  That was not mentioned in
the previous posts.  Secondly is the concern about the Diamond
Discs' potential to be damaged by water, which was also not
mentioned in the previous posts.  I know full well that not all
Diamond Discs have a wood-flour core and that most totally intact
discs can be water-based cleaned, but if someone has only THREE
Diamond Discs, we might as well treat them as if there might be
lamination cracks on a wood flour core.  If we were to go through
all of the questioning to try to determine at a distance if these
are or are not the at-risk versions, that would be far more trouble
than it is worth.  The alcohol will not harm either type of Diamond
Disc--although it would harm the Columbia.  That is the information
that needed to be known, because there is a possibility that they
might see the Edison sleeve info which suggested alcohol and might
also try to clean the Columbia in that same way.   Alcohol wiping of
DDs might be a poor excuse for quality cleaning, but it is good
enough for a first shot for their probable use here, and won't harm
the types of Diamond Discs that might be damaged by water.  In all
the discussions about cleaning DDs it IS still mentioned that some
should not be cleaned with water.

Duane is rather impassioned when he says: "Records are actually more
than collector's artifacts or academic's fodder."  In reality, not
all of them are even that.  The vast majority of the records lying
around are worth a quarter and might not deserve or be worth the
effort that was suggested of borrowing the materials or paying
someone to clean them.  We all get the calls of people with
inherited collections who think they will be able to send their kids
thru college with the proceeds, only to find out that nobody will
give them ten bucks for the whole lot.  I can see these people
having been initially talked into going out and getting a full
cleaning system and expensive new sleeves before anyone bothered to
ask them what the records are.  THEN they are told that they were
not worth it.

Jim's response reminded me that there are professional restorers on
this list.  I wonder what would be the scenario if someone came in
with their "priceless" collection of common Caruso and Glenn Miller
hits and wanted them to be lovingly transferred to CD to pass them
on to their grandchildren.  I would hope they would be advised that
it is not worth it.  If they were rare or one-of-a-kind artifacts,
that is obviously a different story.  But that is the same thing
here.  Why is all of this expensive and time consuming advice being
given out before finding out just what these four records are and
what uses they are going to be put through???  Be practical, folks.
If somebody needs a car, don't sell them a $60,000 Lexus before
finding out that all they need is a heap to go grocery shopping.  I
KNOW that Duane's cleaning materials are good and are better than
the simple methods I suggested--I even stated so in my posting
without naming names--but I was giving a quick and simple solution
for someone with a very few records while imparting some vital
safety details.

Mike Biel  m.biel@morehead-st.edu