Phonoland

Hi
I have a few hundred 45's spanning from the late 50's through the early 80's which I use in my Seeburg AY160. I also have maybe 1000 78's which are less played on a dedicated tabletop player. The 78's are from the early 1900's acoustic era and spans the electric era through the 60's.

I typically buy the record and mix a weak dish detergent and water solution and apply it into the grooves on a turntable with a soft brush then immediately take it to the sink and rinse with city tap water, which has a high chlorine content. Then I carefully rotate the record in the fold of a soft cotton towel.
I let it sit to dry for an hour or so before playing.

My interest is to know your cleaning method, particularly your cleaning fluid recipe. I'd rather vacuum the dirt and fluid out rather than using tap water. I'm working on a record vacuuming machine project.

Thanks in advance!

What I use depends on the type of record and the amount of grime to remove:

Never get the label wet.

- For records I know to be real vinyl, I use a mix of 50% isopropanol (isopropyl alcohol) and 50% distilled water. in a pump-spray bottle I have one of those arms that tracks the disc with a cleaning pad on it. With the cleaning arm at the outside of the disc, I spray the rotating record, and let the cleaning arm track it. Then I clean the pad.

- If the record is especially bad, I then repeat the process, with the pickup arm playing the record wet, in the middle of the wet swath left by the cleaning pad. This way, the cleaning pad wets the disc, and also picks up what the stylus dislodges.

- If I suspect the record is filled vinylite or styrene, I do not use the mix above. I use a very dilute soap solution, followed by another cleaning of distilled water, suing the same methods as above. Many "unbreakable" children's records are styrene.

- For good shellac records made before 1939 or after 1948, I use the same method as for the styrene records, but I use even less soap.

- For records made between 1939 and 1948, I avoid all liquid treatments. Some of the substitute materials used during World War II rationing are water soluble (I have one that has disintegrated on one side because it was allowed to get wet by the previous owner). I use the cleaning pad dry, along with a couple of fine haired brushes I have.

- The same technique for rationing-era records works on cylinders, Edison Diamond Discs, soundsheets and the transparent colored "shellac" records sold as promotion gimmicks.

I drilled sockets to hold these tools into the back of my turntable base. You can see them in my avatar (extremely tiny), or the original size here:

http://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/collo1e.jpg