Sunday 28 June 2009

Cleaning my vinyl records

While waiting for the telco technician to arrive last Friday, I decided to bring out this one vinyl record that I had picked up at a second-hand bookstore quite a while ago. Used records are getting harder to find nowadays..... Sigh.

However, the problem was that this record was in a terrible condition. The surface was very moldy and the inside of the record's cardboard jacket was covered by a layer of black mold. So it wasn't just a matter of cleaning the record only. I had to clean the jacket too. Luckily, this second part wasn't too difficult. A wipe with a damp cloth was enough to remove all the dirt.

But back to the record. It took me quite a while of cleaning with my static brush, a generous dollop of cleaning fluid and some vigorous wipes with non-woven cotton swabs to get back the shine on this record. Here are the swabs I used. See how dirty and black they are? Yucks!

Anyway, it was a good job. I'm quite satisfied with my work, actually. Surprisingly, the record was still in good condition. There wasn't much pops and crackles. This album, Golden Memories Vol 3, contained wonderful gems like John Rowles' One Day and If I Only Had Time, The Grassroots' Let's Live For Today and Three Dog Night's An Old Fashion Love Song.

1 comment:

stephen said...

Have you able to fix wobbly records?I used to be able to clean mouldy records reasonably with a 2step mild detergent and isopropyl alcohol but never wobbly records even with book weights on the records. The woofers on the speakers would excurt terribly and sometimes cause the amps to heat up.Tried vacuum style turntables with limited success.That and the pops and cracks made me give up on vinyl bliss.
Strangely enough, my music tastes have evolved a bit, once i used to dislike listening to Dean Martin, now i am an avid fan- something I can't comprehend!BTW,have a great sunday evening!! I sure am.