Record Cleaning – An Overview

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One of our customers thought he would try a record cleaning service to get some of his records cleaned. Here is what he found.

Hi Tom,

I got my first set of records back from the cleaning service. Very disappointing.

I’m being totally straight when I say you have set a new standard for what I expect a clean record to sound like. As soon as I heard the pressing of Sticky Fingers, and all subsequent records I bought from you, I realized it was possible to get old records really clean. Almost flawlessly clean like a CD I want to say. The sounds on the record are clearer but so are the littlest tiny pops in the groove. I don’t know what you call them to distinguish them from bigger pops, [we call them ticks] but you can hear them so clearly on quiet passages and between songs and really through the song except the loudest parts.

I know not all vinyl is dead quiet but there are few records from the 1980s I took very good care of and hadn’t played very much that they should have been able to get much much cleaner in my opinion. And the record’s surface is perfect to the eye, so I’m guessing it’s their cleaning methods. All the records have the same defect cleaning wise, except the brand new record I sent. That sounds better than it did and is crystal clear. Overall, no bueno.

Your records were way way better. I guess I’m going to have to get that particular solution system you recommended. Do I need that $4000 German machine to do it right after that? Or are there other ultrasonic cleaners worth investigating? I know some people make their own. Whatever you care to share as I don’t have $4000 dollars.

Andrew

Andrew,

Sorry to hear of this company’s failings. As you know, I am not the least bit surprised.

I don’t think anyone that offers such a service would know how to clean records properly. Real cleaning is much more difficult than any of these folks think it is. If they knew how hard it is, they would know how expensive the service would have to be and how unlikely it would be that anyone would want to pay such a price to have a record cleaned and its sound improved.

We don’t offer such a service partly because we know exactly how much work is involved.

The Next Best Thing

On a limited budget, the approach we recommend would be a VPI 16.5 machine (buy one used, they last forever) using the Walker Enzyme System in a three step process. This will get you about halfway to where we are and you would like to be: quieter discs with much improved sound.

If you don’t want to scrub your own records, then an ultrasonic machine is probably your next best bet, but in order for it to do a good job, you must use Walker Step 2 and the proper rinse water afterwards.

Some of these machines are not that expensive, under $1k perhaps, and this should be affordable for the average audiophile. The $8,000 German machine we use makes all our records sound better, but admittedly that is a chunk of change to spend on cleaning. And the time it takes to clean more than a handful of records is considerable. (And we actually own two, one is for parts.)

We have the Walker Enzyme Cleaning System in stock and almost ready to sell. It is the only fluid we recommend. The reasons for that are simple enough — many fluids on the market either don’t do much to quiet records down or make them sound better.

Some fluids we’ve tried will make your records sound worse, which is pretty shocking when you think about it.

Hope this helps give you the guidance you were looking for.

Best, TP

P.S.

We had awful luck with the one cleaning service we tried, a different one from the one you used. Our records came back sounding terrible and we had to reclean them all in order to restore the sound quality they had apparently removed with their “process.”

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Further Reading

• Record Playback Advice 
• Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z
• How to Get the Most Out of Your Records – A Step by Step Guide