The Best Way To Clean Vinyl?

[innovine]

Is there any way to clean the sleeves and jackets? I've crates of old fleamarket vinyl but I can just browse through a few of them before the smell of mold and dust irritates the hell out of my sinuses.

[Hades]

noseplugs ?

[Mslwte]

I love the old smell of the sleeves.


Fuck yeah!

[Hades]

me too.

I love the smell of old books as well.
hoping to make library shelves next year, so we can move our books from the smaller room we use now for our library to our big room we want to use for it.
there's nothing like haing library shelves from floor to ceiling, especially if you have your ceiling at 3.75m high.

and when the books are moved, the smaller room gets to be vinyl collection + DJ space...

[Evert]

I received a second hand vinyl record yesterday. Unfortunately, it sounded like crap due to the all the dirt that was on it.
The only way to save it was to properly clean it, but I didn't really have dedicated vinyl cleaning material at home.
I did however have this magic sponge/magic eraser (the white Mr Clean sponge) lying around.
I made it slightly wet and used it to clean the record, without adding too much pressure to it and the result was great.

After researching it a bit more on the internet, it seems like there's a debate on whether you should or shouldn't use it. Some people think it's too abrasive to use on a record.

Does anyone have experience with this and is it really that harmful? It seemed to work just fine for me.

[Hades]

old topic.
funny reading back my own words from almost 4 years ago

but honestly, in all those years I've been buying new or used vinyl...
I would think that if there is any form of debate,
that means it won't be the end of all existence if you use the product yes or no.
If any kind of product would be truly harmful, there wouldn't even be a debate, just a general consensus not to use it in any possible way.

I think it's most of all important to keep in mind that it's just a piece of plastic.
So yeah, if you paid like 100€ for this, and you're afraid the market value of your latest purchase will go down because you used the wrong product,
have a look around the internet before you use any product to clean it up,
but otherwise, just use some piece of dry cloth or a brush designed for that kind of stuff, and you should be more than fine.
I always tend to go over the record I just put on with one of those anti-static vinyl brushes, as a way of cleaning stuff on a semi-regular basis.

[Evert]

No worries, the record cost like € 4 hehe.
I tried the felt brush at first, but dry cleaning didn't have any effect. The record just was too dirty to get it cleaned that way.
I meant some kind of alcohol/cleaning solution or a decent microfibre cloth when I mentioned I didn't have proper vinyl cleaning materials. I should have been more clear on that.

[auryn]

I used to work in a 2nd hand record store and we always used the special vinyl cleaner spray bottles and a very soft cloth. The manager, who worked with records for over 20 years, swore by the stuff. IIRC water is not the best solution because of the calcium which will stay in the groove when the water evaporates. If you do use water, make sure to dry it with a bit of cloth.

[Mslwte]

i use warm water and rinse them in the shower (not while i'm in there though) and then dry them on the floor between 2 towels. thats always worked for me.

[Mslwte]

looks like i already said that lol

[Amøbe]

A topic I know a little about At my work (danish nation radio's record collection) we have a pretty expensive record cleaner. From what I understand it is only necessary to buy one of the expensive ones if time is an issue (it is quite fast).

However, there are another thing, which is important. Some soap and cleaning fluids can be a little harsh on the record, so it is a good idea to water it down (we use 1/5 cleaning fluid and 4/5 water).

Water is however a bigger issue. It can leave behind Calcite, which you do not want! In most super market you can buy demineralized water that solves this!

If it is just an issue of dust, most good vinyl brooms solves this. Washing helps getting rid of finger grease.