Record Cleaning Machine Fluid

I'm consistently amazed at audiophiles, as a group, believing that a product costing $20-$50/pint or quart or what have you will provide better performance than a basic cleaning solution discounting far more salient factors such as good brushes and vacuuming.

How soaps and detergents work is taught in high school chemistry. Soaps have both polar and nonpolar ends to link water and 'dirt'. We are also taught that scrubbing action is ALWAYS needed in order to properly clean. Therefore, the cleaning solution (whatever is being used) must reach down into the grooves and then be scrubbed. How it is removed is another issue.

I've decided to give this a try since it makes a lot of sense to just use plenty fresh water to rinse record fluids ( hey, just like washing salt water out of a boat).

Groovmaster

I can always do like in a commercial car wash: use lower dissolved solids water to do final *spotless* rinsing (ultrapure water in my case). I do not plan to use my vacuum machine to remove soapy water and contaminate its pads. I'll use the Groovmaster to flush all cleaning solutions ( the soap ) while protecting the record labels. My local water supply comes from the rain forest so its conductivity is around 90 microSiemens, much less than most bottled water.

The guy in eBay who sells the Groovmaster has plenty following. I plan to write a review on this gadget.

Dougdeacon, that 'intentional low surface tension' thing is another high end marketing trick for the gullible. Anybody with enough chemistry background knows it's crap.

***

I use the Groovmaster with great success.
First I steam which the Groovmaster makes really easy.
Todd the Vinyl Junkie recommended Oxiclean which I'm using for the really water damaged LP's (paper attached and visible growths!).
I just mix mild solution with distilled water, spray on and scrub with the brush that comes with the Groovmaster. Then 2 x RRL treatments on RCM and all is quiet!

Anyone know if I can re-use remaining Oxiclean mix a few days later or do I need to make a fresh batch eackh time?

My "cheat" is that I use filtered tap water for the rinsing as the hassle of going to distilled each time is too big for me! I'm at the sink!

My thinking is that Oxiclean produces hydrogen peroxide which is the main active ingredient...sound thinking? I'm an arts major who can only get so anal!
Only use above on worst cases but my experience says it works!

Audiofeil,

"Dirt" and its removal are not as simplistic as you seem to believe. Read Oilmanjo's post, for starters.

I regularly promote the world's cheapest and most effective DIY stylus cleaner. An audiophile I am, but gullible? Try again my friend...

Psychicanimal,
I've owned a Groovmaster for years and it works well. Unfortunately, our public water supply is less pure than yours. It frequently contains deposits that ruin records so I dare not use it as you plan to.

The surface tension of RRL makes it easy to remove from the record. That is not marketing-speak. It is my real world, everyday experience. If you think that's 'crap', that's your business.

If you prefer to DIY I don't question your judgement. I don't have the time or inclination to become a home chemist, so I'm willing to pay for an effective product. If you make something better and sell it for less I'll buy it - unless you try to convince me with marketing crap. ;-)

"My experience is that AIVS went too far. Its rinsability is clearly inferior to RRL's. It left audible residue that took multiple rinse/vac cycles to remove. That is why I bring it out for hardship case LP's only. In our experience RRL (+ Vinyl Zyme) is the better performing product. YMMV of course, but I didn't want anyone believing that "beading up" is a downside with RRL. It's not. It's a carefully selected design feature."

1. It is my understanding, Doug, that your experience with AI was limited to the beta testing period, and the formulas have been greatly refined and improved since then. I believe we talked about this a few months ago.

2. Out of all the audiophiles who have used AI, only three ever complained of difficulty in rinsing it. When M. Fremer did his shoot-out, he personally called me and said AI could remove grunge and things no other product could, and that he detected NO sonic signature at all.

Also, Jim Pendleton and his company Osage Audio recently became the sole distributor for the AI products. As part of his due diligence, Jim had an experienced chem lab check the LPs after they had been cleaned using the AI three-step process. The chem lab found NO residue.

3. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to claim that a water-based product's beading-up is a "carefully selected design feature" because beading-up is a natural property of water that contains no surfactant. It's like saying that canned air has oxygen as a carefully selected design feature.

Almost all water-based cleaners employ a surfactant so the product doesn't just sit on the surface of the thing being cleaned. A cleaner using water's natural surface tension cannot easily be forced to enter tight spaces, such as a groove on a vinyl album. How much of a vertical distance is there from the surface of a record to the bottom of its grooves? 1/32 inch? Less? If your RCM can remove liquid on the surface of a record, but cannot suck it out of the grooves, the RCM suffers from an astouding lack of suction power, and surely then the results are RCM-dependent.

Psychicanimal ... you know more about water quality than just about anyone here, so I assume your reference to soap was just a slip of the tongue. There is no soap in any AI product.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Best regards to all,
Paul Frumkin

Solubilization of salts, proteins, nucleic acids, fatty acids, and the resuspension of inorganic micro and nanoparticles, as a chemical action on vinyl, requires that a surfactant be used to reduce surface tension to enable removal. The amount should be such that it leaves minimal residue. It's a tradeoff function, there is no free ride and none of this is rocket science. I happen to like RR fluids because I think the deigner hit the correct balance that does the job well. I have never been disappointed by the cleaning ability of these products nor have I ever noticed residue build up on my styli after playing.