Premium distilled water for ultrasonic record cleaner
There's some truth and some BS in this thread. For a treatise that is worth reading, go here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/finding-pure-water-for-record-cleaning-very-long?highlight=water |
lewm: The thread you've linked to is the "Justin Time water thread" and is mentioned in the thread that jtimothya linked to earlier here. It's excellent technical reading, very detailed, but may not interest those who don't care about the science of it all and just want to know which water to buy and use, and how to use it effectively to achieve the best results.. B.S. or not (and I don't know if it's anything I wrote) surely the bottom line is that anyone who is seriously interested in record cleaning is doing it with the sole aim of achieving better sounding records! It's not like I'm cleaning records just to look at them, I want to play them and hear more music, although I suppose reduced stylus wear might also be a nice bonus consideration if you have an expensive cartridge.. Given that thousands can easily be spent on buying hi-fi equipment, upgrades, and tweaks for a "really good" system (the hardware) it surely makes sense to pay close attention to how best to clean your record collection (the software) and get the best from your investment in both. Just my 2 cents of course, I spend a lot of time cleaning records! |
Dave I have a Loricraft and stepped up to a Klaudio i have only used the Loricraft as a first step on just a few records what are your thoughts on the washing and drying times? I go 4 min on the wash and 3 minutes gives you a fully dry record My Klaudio Silencer arrived on friday. Very expensive but well worth it. It is built like a tank and well thought out in execution. It really silences both the cleaning and drying phase. The drying phase is the slightly noisier stage. I have mine in the next room from my audiosystem and I never cleaned records while playing them (cds only). I can do both. We can now watch tv without turning the volume up. My 22 year old son always cringed when he saw me taking a stack of records towards the machine. Now he is thrilled by the process. klaudio does have the unit priced $200 lower |
Audiotomb: On the Klaudio machines I normally do a full 5 minutes wash, and 5 minutes dry, to make absolutely sure records are 100% dry before putting them in new sleeves. I use either MoFi or Diskeeper 2.0 sleeves, based on whether I’m single-cleaning or double-cleaning, and customer choice. I do the same with the Audio Desk machines, a maximum 5 minute wash, and the drying time is fixed at 4 minutes. I’m doing more double-cleaning than anything else right now, that’s been very popular with customers, and I use the Audio Desk for a 5 minute wash first, and then Klaudio for another 5 minute wash and 5 minute drying. This works out well, since the Audio Desk drying power isn’t nearly as good as Klaudio’s more powerful fan, especially when the "wipers" get worn on the Audio Desk.. Aside from the expense, I don’t have room for the Klaudio "Silencer" boxes (reminds me of when noisy commercial dot-matrix printers went in something similar) since all my equipment is on two 6-foot stainless steel tables, and my old desk. I’ve got 2 Klaudios, 2 Audio Desks, a Furutech DeMag, and VPI 16.5, and a Furutech DF-2 flattener.. So it’s a bit crowded, and all of this shares space in my music room, which I’m lucky to have since it’s a "no-go-zone" (with a baby gate) for my kids 6, 4, and 20 months! Honestly, all of this equipment is way too noisy, couldn’t these machines have been designed to be quieter, knowing they’d most likely be used in an environment (room) where the owner also wants to listen to music?! The Klaudio and Audio Desk are bad enough, but the worst offender is my VPI 16.5 which I use for pre-cleaning chores when needed. Depending on what customers send me in any given week, I can literally be cleaning for hours at a time, often late into the night after the kids have to gone to bed, so I have worn earplugs at night (when I can’t turn up my system volume) and I now use some Klipsch X7i earphones that fit snugly and offer very good sound isolation. You’re smart to protect your hearing from prolonged exposure to the audible noise the machines make (without even knowing what the potential effects of the ultrasonics might be) otherwise you may not be able to enjoy the better sound from those super clean records! |
Dave it sounds like a great setup / business that you have the Klaudio silencer doesn’t take up much more of a footprint at the base, but it is a bit taller laugh, I have mine on the back end of my kitchen table except when I have guest over for dinner good place to lay down albums sleeves and stack the ready to go and completed records vertically on two adjacent chairs i read somewhere that the silencer even fits the Audio Deske you might ask Tim my friend has an audiodeske maybe we should join forces My lps are always dry by three minutes and I used to run the dryer at four will go five just to make sure the Acoustic Sounds QRP inner sleeves are great i buy packets to get my order totals high enough for free shipping thanks to everyone for the great thread going well beyond the subtleties of h2o |
