Humminguru Nova

I swear by my Hummin Guru. I clean all records when I get them, both used and new. It’s amazing how I can run an old record thru one or 2 cycles and make it sound like new. It also lets you see how dirty even new records are by the residue trapped in the filter. 

“Can’t beat the convenience factor of the US machine”
@audphile1 

Exactly!  I believe you will appreciate the convenience more as your collection grows. For extra dirty records, run a longer cycle or ran them through Nova twice. All you need is distilled water and new records to keep the cleaning regime going! 

The only system I will ever use. https://kirmussaudio.com/

FWIW:  most nonionic surfactants used in record cleaners have two purposes:

• Wetting:  Reduce the surface tension of water thereby allow the water to easily spread-out across the surface which is commonly called wetting.  This wetting ability improves cleaning efficiency and also allows the record to dry faster since a thin film of water dries much faster than beads of water.
• Detergency:  When the surfactant concentration increases to the point where the surface tension of water decreases no more, this is known as the critical micelle concentration (CMC).  Increase the concentration >CMC and cylindrical and spherical type structures called “micelles” are formed and these are what provide the detergency (they lift and encapsulate oil and dirt).  Every surfactant has a different CMC.

If you know the specific nonionic surfactant, can identify its CMC and know the concentration, you can adjust the concentration for what property you want.  A high-performance nonionic surfactant like Tergitol 15-S-9 has a very low CMC of 0.0052% (52-ppm).  Used at 0.003 to 0.005% it will provide wetting but be at so low a concentration as to not interfere with the record cleanliness and is commonly known as a no-rinse concentration.   

Increasing the concentration to about 3X-CMC will get good detergency (as far as a nonionic surfactant is concerned) but the concentration will be so high, that you need to rinse to avoid any interfering residue.

 Tergikleen is a blend of two nonionic surfactants - Tergitol 15-S-9 that is water soluble and Tergitol 15-S-3 which is not water soluble and has no CMC.  Tergikleen is not really intended as a wetting agent (because of the 15-S-3) but is intended as a cleaning agent and needs to be rinsed as the manufacture states.

In this free book Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records-3rd Edition - The Vinyl Press, Chapter XIV, Table XXIII Nalgene™ Dropper Bottle Use for Degritter™ & Humminguru™ shows how to use known nonionic surfactants to obtain wetting or detergency.  Note that you can buy Tergitol 15-S-9 (1-pint) from Tergitol 15-S-3 and 15-S-9 Surfactant | TALAS whose shipping is expensive, but the Tergitol will last many years.  Otherwise, Polysorbate 20 can be bought from Amazon and best to purchase small volumes (6-oz or less) since it is not as shelf-stable as Tergitol.  The 2-oz Nalgene dropper bottle (that delivers a 0.04-ml drop) can also be purchased from Amazon Amazon.com : Nalgene Plastic Drop Bottle 2 oz. : Sports Water Bottle Accessories : Sports & Outdoors.

Also, note that many people have had good luck with the HG and 1-drop of G•Sonic Ultrasonic Concentrate – GrooveWasher.  

@antinn I skimmed thru the paper. Will do a deeper dive in a bit. But what I gathered is pure distilled water in UCM will do a good enough job unless the record is in bad shape and requires more involvement.