Ultrasonic cleaning with kirmuss and loss of high frequency details.


I just purchased the kirmuss US machine and diligently followed their instructions to cycle through minimum 3 cleanings of 5 min each with their surfactant applied each time. Upon testing my favorite vinyl and critically listening through my headphones I am convinced I’ve lost high frequency details. My background is completely silent and ticks and pops have been reduced by 95% or more. So cleaning wise it did the job. Anyone here ever experience loss of high frequency detail after repeated US cleaning? Now I’m worried I permanently damaged my favorite vinyl somehow. Please let me know, thx.
tubelvr1

Showing 1 response by ediver

@1stump.  Exactly.
@tubelvr1.  No way, you are misinformed.  I have a Kirmuss.  And I have tried KLAudio and the other mega expensive unit. (Shh. I bring my records over to one of several friends, and clean on their dime.  All I have to do is bring over some beer). Much easier than playing with the Kirmuss as I have a small apartment.  None of them noticeably change the HF.  What they do is change the balance somewhat, because the grunge/noise/ticks are significantly reduced in most cases (unless it is a pristine, super quality pressing, like some of audiophile pressings).  In the case of a great pressing, the difference is not as noticeable. 
    The advantage of the Kirmuss over many other US systems is that you can use your own "concoction" and are not required to use his pre-cleaning ritual, which I would certainly use on dirty records, but likely not 3 times, and likely not on clean records. I wish I had two machines - one to wash and one to rinse...I believe his pretreatment is glycol, which serves the purpose of a wetting agent.  I still have a stock of photoflo, so I use a little of that in the wash.  Or as we used in the days of bathroom darkroom, try one very small drop of Joy in the 2 gallons of distilled, deionized water. There are other recommendations in the great pf online article; I think he  uses Triton X-100 as a wetting agent. 
   So @tubelvr1: find a ritual that works for you, and there is no need to wash 3x, especially if the record was initially what we used to call "clean."  You might also try a brief rinse with distilled deionized water.(Buy another Kirmuss. lulz) If you are concerned with the sound balance, so what was suggested: take 2 copies of the  same record, overclean one, and compare to the uncleaned.  
  Finally, the frequency of the Kirmuss machine is fairly low IIRC, about-35 kHz, and with a 2 gal tank, there is plenty of "room" to not be affected by washed off dirt, with reasonable fluid changes. This is more or lesss what every other US cleaner does.  The big advantage of the Kirmuss is that the system hardware is equivalent to a good grade roll your own or some of the more expensive units out there, it looks better than a roll your own, allows great flexibility compared to a roll your own, and is priced only a little more than a roll your own - the big tanks that are well made are expensive. So if no other commercial US damages records, I would say it is virtually impossible for the Kirmuss to behave any differently.