Some observations from using Paul's formula on about a dozen records:
First, A/B comparison of cleaning formulas is clearly inherently difficult - you can't ever make it dirty again and try the other cleaner. Using one cleaner on one side and another on the the other also doesn't work as the sides can be as different as night and day. The approach I took was first to use the cleaner on records that were already cleaned with my home brew and/or RRL super vinyl wash (I usually double clean but not always) and then to try it on uncleaned records. For the first test, I used records which still had some evidence of noise after cleaning.
Results:
First, I can say that this is not a miracle cure for your noisy records. Of 6 records all showed some improvement but only one showed more than the roughly 5% (slight) improvement that I would expect with a second cleaning. This may not be due to inadequacies of the cleaner as much as the fact that the records were already cleaned as much as possible. One record seemed to show a much more noticeable improvement in overall quality and dynamics. Again, it is difficult to assess this as you can't flip back and forth between the before and after and I tend to get so into the music that I forget I'm supposed to be listening to the sound but there seemed to be less "whoolyness" and much more focused sound.
I next tried cleaning several uncleaned, used records with the solutions. The result was excellent but again, I cannot say whether it would have been better or worse with RRL.
A couple of other observations - The enzymatic cleaner smells like the stuff I used to use on my contact lenses for overnight cleaning. You can't clean contact lenses with a few minutes immersion in cleaner and I wonder if the same is true for records. (and the contacts have only accumulated crud from one day, not 50 years!)
The cleaner also seemed to clean finger prints in the dead wax better than other cleaners. Finally, I liked the flow and dispersion over the record better than RRL fluid which seems to bead up on the surface. I know that the RRL people say that this helps "lift" the crud out of the grooves but I prefer to have the fluid get down in the grooves and let my 3hp custom record vac do the "heavy lifting" - it can practically suck the label off so there is no need for the fluid to do lifting.
In conclusion, I would purchase this product if reasonably priced to have an alternative to my current cleaners. My results suggest to me that alternative formulas and record cleaning strategies may work better on different records with different problems. No harm trying as many as I can. As for the potential of record damage - I'm not too concerned as my 50 year old ears will probably degrade far faster than the vinyl.
Paul - thanks for the samples and your contributions to record cleaning efforts
