Vinyl, by its very nature is soft plastic, the grooves are dirt pockets and they need to be flushed out regularly. If you want to get the best sound quality possible from your LP collection, cleaning your vinyl is a must! There are many solutions available costing from around £45 in the form of the very popular Disco-Antistat up to many thousands of the pounds like the Nessie Vinyl Master.
We recommend the professional machines for audiophiles with very large LP collections. These machines are constructed to withstand everyday use an everyday listener might subject them to. The less expensive machines are more suited to the occasional cleaning of a more casual listener who might play their vinyl only on the weekends.
Whichever cleaning machine/system you purchase it is also important to not neglect the fluid itself. To get the best out of your cleaning process, it is advised that you do not re-use fluid and only use quality brands such as L’Art Du Son. When cleaning the record, regardless of the machines, it is actually the fluid that is doing most of the work in cleaning out the gunk and debris from those precious grooves.
The difference in sound quality between an old dirty LP and one that has been properly cleaned can be amazing. In addition to improvements in sound quality, cleaning also in-directly reduces wear and tear on both your stylus and the record groove itself! With cartridges costing up to £10,000 and beyond and your precious LP’s costing emotionally far more, it makes sense to do everything within your power to make them last as long as you can.
Finally try not to forget what a lot of vinyl lovers seem to. Once you have taken the time and expense to meticulously clean your pride and joy don’t just chuck them back into the old tatty inner sleeve that it came out of. Use a new anti static inner sleeve to keep the vinyl in tip top condition, we have Nagaoka, MoFi and our own branded sleeves so plenty of choice is available.
We purposefully haven’t gone into the specifics regarding the actual process of cleaning LP’s here, as a lot of the machines/systems use different methods/mechanics to do the job. What we did want to get across in this post is that whichever method you do use it will result in a sometimes-astonishing sonic up-grade that is wonderful to hear, and after all is that not what vinyl is all about!
We shall be posting many more cleaning tips as time goes on, but in the meanwhile if you would like some specific advice about which record cleaning device is right for you, then why not get in touch
