Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?


It has happened again. Major tweak and record provider has available a steam cleaner made especially for records. Anybody try steam for cleaning lp’s? What were your results? Since a unit can be had for about $20 at Target, 15% of what the tweak provider is charging, is it worth a try?.
tiger

Showing 8 responses by herman

No problem, in the pursuit of audiophile nirvana I am willing to scale Mt. Everest with a few thousand records and clean them there.
Crem, you are ate up with this steam cleaning thing.

Bravo, I admire your passion. My system is down for a move but I have this thread bookmarked and will be steaming when I am back up.
Well, aren't we a little full of ourselves. St. Crem spreads the holy gospel of steam cleaning and gets his feathers ruffled when asked a perfectly logical question. Were you drunk? Your other posts have been well constructed with few if any grammatical or spelling errors. This little rant is chock full of them.

You stated that this process was important to collectors of valuable records like yourself who have upwards of 100,000 records. I am simply pointing out that the task of cleaning such a collection using your method, or any method for that matter beyond a simple dusting is beyond the realm of any reasonable human being. That means that the process is no more valuable to somebody with 100,000 than to someone with 500 since the former would never be able to implement it.

I also think my observation is valid that at some point the hours put into this thread and the hours spent cleaning could be better spent listening. There must be a reasonable balance between listening to dirty records and spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning records and talking about cleaning records.

If that pisses you off as it clearly has I fail to see the reason why. I appreciate your input and thanked you early on in this thread for bringing this process to my attention. I think my observations yesterday were valid, well reasoned, sincere, and in no way flaming you.

I apologize if it seemed otherwise but I must say your response was completely unexpected.

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But what about folks like me with 5,000 + LPs or friends that own 15,000 or more of the rarest LPs in the world. How about them? I have several friends (including me) that pay for music advisors to search the world for only the most significant recordings.

I have to ask, do you also pay someone to clean your records?

If you spent 2 hours a day every single day cleaning records and took 10 minutes per record it would take over 3 years to clean 15,000.

If a typical record is 40 minutes long and you somehow manage to listen an average of 4 hours a day every single day it would take about 7 years to listen to 15,000 if you never repeated.

I do have a steamer and clean special records, but at some point the effort outstrips the reward. I find it impossible to believe that anyone would clean 5,000 records much less 15,000, and who can ever expect to clean 100,000 or ever listen to them.

I have probably over 3,000 myself but would never consider cleaning all of them. The time it takes to do so takes away from the limited time I have to listen. The amount of time spent in this thread on the minutia of the process is time wasted that could have been spent listening. I propose that you have become so eaten up with the process of cleaning that you have detracted from the joy of listening.
Crem, this has become truly bizarre. I merely pointed out that you were spending an inordinate amount of time and effort on this process and now you have turned it into a personal attack and brought your Mother into the discussion. I must withdraw as I have no rebuttal for the mommy factor. However, I genuinely am concerned about the state of your mental health since your postings have clearly deteriorated in style as well as having a marked increase in grammatical and spelling errors. I apologize if you are suffering from some malady that we are unaware of.

Anybody who has a balanced view of life can’t help but notice that yours is clearly unbalanced with your admitted 100’s of hours spent on this thread alone. I question my own sanity with the little time I’ve spent on it.

I must also say that in an odd way I do admire your fixation with this topic much as I admire a mad genius like Glenn Gould who obsessed about finding a perfect piano, but at the end of the day it really isn’t a healthy place to be.

I will leave you alone to your obsessions and paranoia. Adios.

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