Vinyl Care

@antinn Is GruvGlide similar to Last? There was a time when I used it, but not in recent years. I did like the smell....

@dogberry,

No, GruvGlide is nothing like LAST.   If this is still the ingredients of GruvGlide - Gruv Glide Ingredients Revealed- Vinyl Engine, it's an antistatic spray.  Quaternary ammonium compounds (QUATs for short) are cationic surfactants which are very hygroscopic.  When the solution evaporates, a film (residue) of QUATs is left behind, and being very hygroscopic pulls moisture from the air and the ionic solution neutralizes any static.  They have limits and tend not work very well below about 30% relative humidity.  QUATs are used in every hair conditioning product to prevent hair frizz.  QUATs are also anti-bacterial and with the right amount of solution and residence time can kill bacteria and viruses.  Most of your home anti-bacterial cleaners have QUATs; although as cleaning agents, cationic surfactants are poor.  

Tried GruvGlide years ago and it left residue on my stylus every time. 

Thanks, Neil. Looks like it's been changed since then and the cans no longer mention the QA compounds. I'll save my old cans in case I ever fancy taking up solvent sniffing.

@billstevenson 

Do not worry about things that cannot occur such as diamond tracing vinyl producing electrostatic energy

What a very strange approach you have to science, and the scientific method!

Perhaps you would care, in your spirit of keeping this thread on the straight and narrow, to explain what you mean by this statement, and how you know it cannot occur?

By the way, I do not think anyone has claimed that "diamond tracing vinyl" produces electrostatic energy.  Apart from anything else, as far as we know in our universe, energy (as defined by physics) is always conserved.

Friction between two insulators does cause some electrons to be displaced from the insulator with the lower electron affinity to the one with the higher affinity.  Polyvinyl chloride has one of the highest known electron affinities.  Once again, I trust Wikipedia: Triboelectric effect - Wikipedia.  I quote

It is ubiquitous, and occurs with differing amounts of charge transfer (tribocharge) for all solid materials

Next I would invite you to consider what the consequences of such charges, adhering to the vinyl groove wall, might be? 

I have been ridiculed in this forum for pointing out that electromagnetic forces exceed gravitational forces by about 36 orders of magnitude, according to the Standard Model of particle physics: see Standard Model - Wikipedia

Strength at the scale of protons/neutrons (relative to electromagnetism)

10−36 (predicted)

I hypothesise that these stray electrons will attract any positively charged dust mites and clamp them to the groove wall with tremendous force, where they will cause clicks and pops when traced by the diamond stylus.  Neil’s book shows electron microscope images which would tend to support this hypothesis.

Interestingly, we all (hopefully) know that diamond stylii wear on their contact facets during play.  The bits of diamond that are abraded away are likely to be positively charged (in our universe charge is conserved and the diamond has donated electrons to the vinyl) and will add to the material locked in place in the groove.  And diamond is the best abrasive known to man.

Neil’s book reports an astonishing proportion of diamond dust in the detritus picked up by stylii:

An analysis of the “dust” removed from a number of stylus tips, which had been used on dirty records, showed that it consisted of approximately: 12% jagged silica particles, 35% diamond dust, 40% miscellaneous particles, including soot, grit and particles worn from the record groove itself.  The remaining 13% consisted of fibers and lint. 

My belief is a hypothesis, but seems to be supported by empirical evidence.  If I were smart enough, I should make some predictions that others could test but experimental physics at small scales is both difficult and expensive!