The Prelude Record Cleaning System Is Now Available
Someone used to sit in an unheated, uncooled cottage all day, running the records through our proprietary multi-step cleaning process. (At the bottom of this listing you can see our old setup.)
There’s a very good reason why it was unheated and uncooled — not to save on electricity, but to allow the stereo to sound its best.
Now our record cleaning person has a nice big room adjoining our studio in an office complex to sit in.
Every Hot Stamper pressing has been vacuum cleaned on multiple machines using the Prelude Enzyme system.
Prelude is the only fluid we recommend for serious sound enhancement and cleaning of your LPs. You have never heard what’s really in the grooves of your records until you’ve cleaned them using The Prelude Record Cleaning System. There is nothing in our experience that works remotely as well.
We’ve also tried a number of “single step” record cleaning fluids and found that none were satisfactory. Disc Doctor is two steps, Prelude is three (or four depending on whether you choose to use their new final rinse. At this time we do not). If you can’t see yourself using a three step cleaning process — no matter how much better it makes your records sound — then stick with Disc Doctor. You are sacrificing a great deal of sound quality this way, but the choice is yours.
For cheap records alcohol and water are fine.
Cleaning Hot Stampers
We here at Better Records believe it’s virtually impossible to make meaningful comparisons among used or new (!) records that have not been properly cleaned. We have this fact thrown in our faces on a near daily basis, as so-so record after so-so record reveals layer upon layer of magic in its grooves after a good cleaning.
In 2007 we purchased an Odyssey RCM MKV Cleaning Machine. At about $8000 it’s an excellent machine if money is not at issue. We still use our VPI 16.5 machine in the early stages of our cleaning process.
Every record that we play in our Hot Stamper shootouts is first scrubbed on the 16.5 with Prelude Record Cleaning fluids and then vacuumed with the Odyssey. Our cleaning regimen involves multiple stages and processes, some of which we have never revealed, nor do we have any plans to do so. It took us about ten years to get to where we are with record cleaning and it gives us a big sonic advantage over everyone who hasn’t developed the methods that work so well for us.
The Keith Monks style machines should work just as well as the Odyssey. Others with the thread design they pioneered will too.
If you want to make your records sound better, you need a machine of this design.
Further Reading
- More helpful advice for cleaning records
- Our step by step guide for getting the most out of your records
- Proper record cleaning is key to finding your own Hot Stamper pressings
Someone used to have to sit in this cramped room all day and clean records for us, but since we moved to our new digs, that person has a much nicer, more spacious room to spend their days in.
Still a lot of work though. We estimate that four records an hour is about the most anyone can manage to clean.
Your mileage may vary, but more than a few hours time spent cleaning is a lot harder than it sounds.