To Loricraft users

Tbg, yes, it is the cleaner alone of the AudioTop system that I am using. I would have liked to try the Vinyl 2, but I doubted I would be able to get it onto the record surface before it evaporated, and the price made experimentation impracticable. Probably I should either have gone whole hog or stayed away completely, and between the two the latter would have made more sense, since other things about my system need more urgent attention than the last degree of perfection in vinyl cleaning. But cleaning, at least as I find myself doing it, is sufficiently laborious that I want to do it right once and for all, not so much so for the sake of the difference I can hear now (though of course that matters) as for the sake of the difference I hope I may be able to hear later with whatever I end up getting to take the Rega's place. Already the thought of all those lps I cleaned when I was first starting out, when I believed a single brief scrubbing was all they needed, weighs upon me. How common is it, I wonder, for people to clean their records to the imaginary standard of a system they don't have yet and may indeed never have?

I can well believe that AudioTop behaves more reasaonably in Texas. Here (Buffalo) it's 2 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and if I hadn't been simmering a pot of beans all afternoon the air would be like broken glass.

Sre, I may have cleaned records a second time with the same record cleaner, but it is very rare. I did discover, however, that records I had cleaned with VPI machines are much improved using the Loricraft and then further improved now that I have the AudioTop.

Yes, you have to be very quick using Vinyl2. Fortunately the speed of the Loricraft assures that you will get at least several rotations before the fluid is gone.

As I type this morning the relative humidity is 34% inside. This may well be a limitation on the AudioTop chemicals.

Cmk and Tbg,

I tried it. 0g downforce I mean.

It works great! Of course you already knew that.

Thanks for the tip.

I sold my VPI 16.5 and took delivery of a Loricraft PCR3 3 days ago. I made the change mainly because of concerns related to transferring contaminants from record to record. The Loricraft solves that problem in the vacuuming step by using a moving string as the contact point between record and vacuum nozzle. The VPI has nylon strips on a vacuum tube that contact repeatedly each successive record, potentially spreading dirt, and if the record came from a dirty enough environment, brown tar like goo. I think the Loricraft does a better job in the vacuuming step, concentrating its power at one point rather than spreading it out over a tube the width of a record. But the problem still remains of your cleaning brushes and if you are cleaning a really dirty record, spreading the bad stuff to the next one. How do you Loricraft users address this, or am I being too concerned?

Something I miss from the VPI is the ability to use the vacuum port to clean the brushes. I would (thanks to 4yanx for this) vacuum the brushes (and vacuum tubes contact area)after each record and every fourth record rinse them with their respective fluid (RRL SDC or SVW) and then vacuum them. So I at least felt like I was keeping those items clean. With the Loricraft I’m looking at my brushes after a couple records thinking I wish I could vacuum off whatever is on there.

So I’m still in the trial stage. It’s a beautiful machine and it gets more of the fluid off the record I’m sure, but I don’t know yet if it’s worth the cost. I cleaned some older records with it that were a little noisy after the VPI and they still were after the Loricraft. These are 40 years old and it’s probably not dirt causing the ticks and crackle. I don’t know for sure, but those and other records may have sounded a little better in some nebulous way that I’m not able to identify.

I rinse the nylon brush with distilled water occasionally. I had to stop using the DD brushes as the AudioTop evaporates too quickly to use them.

I certainly have records that the Loricraft fails to remove all pops, but I frequently find that records previously cleaned with the VPI sound more transparent once cleaned on the Loricraft.