Vacuum Record Cleaner Rreplacement

@kevemaher 

I believe that the wooshing is not a single item issue

It will be interesting if my second copies "whoosh".in similar places.  They are Australian pressings and Aussie quality control is normally pretty laid back in a "she'll be right" sort of way.

I have a feeling that whooshing is a vinyl consistency problem, but have no proof.  There are stories of vinyl being recycled, labels and all, which could explain why you get similar whooshing on both sides.

In Australia, the seller is held accountable for substandard goods, not the manufacturer, though the seller can in turn claim against the manufacturer.  Not a good look for a small record store against the mighty Universal Music Group!

Testing in general is a complex subject.  Before software was engineered, the quip was that testing could only prove the presence of bugs, not their absense.  Even today, most software is developed using debugging tools instead of engineering discipline 

Playing a record seems to be a bit like attending a live performance.  You never know what might go wrong next .  Adds to the sense of occasion ...

@lewm 

Unfortunately for me, I waited too long after purchase to discover the problems

That’s interesting.  Under Australian consumer law, the clock starts ticking when the consumer first discovers the problem, and stops ticking three years later.

Whether or not there is a problem depends on what a ’reasonable person’ would think.

In theory.

Regardless, I have never had a request for a refund or exchange knocked back by the supplier, though I feel very bad about having to ask for one

RB, If you must know the ugly truth.  This concerned (at least) one LP in a 5 record set of Miles Davis early quintet recordings, which were originally from Prestige.  These all precede "Kind of Blue", chronologically. The set includes such classics as "Workin'", "Relaxin'", etc. As it turned out, I also have most of the original Prestige LPs as individual albums and so the set from Classic did not receive much play over the years until one day about 5 years ago when I decided to plow through them.  I already knew that in the case of "Workin'", the original Prestige pressing was superior to the Classic LP equivalent. Anyway, when I played one of the more obscure recordings in that Miles Davis Quintet grouping, I noted an odd form of distortion. I pulled out my Prestige equivalent really to see whether the distortion might be on the master tape or something like that. This comparison showed that the Classic re-issue is grossly defective. One wonders whether the folks at Classic ever actually listened to it.  Anyway, Classic Records existed between 1994 and 2010, when it was purchased by Analog Productions.  So Classic as a brand was defunct for between 5 and 10 years before I discovered the problem.

@richardbrand 

May I just add that, according to the paper I referenced earlier, the size of the bubbles produced is also affected by temperature

I was unable to find your linked paper, but it's common knowledge that higher temperature will improve cleaning Cavitation-dynamics-in-water-at-elevated-temperatures-and-in-liquid.pdf but the peak is about 60C (140F) with little change up to 40C (104F).  As far as record cavitation cleaning is concerned, I do not see temperature as a valid impact.  However, there is testing that also shows that the depth of water in the tank as multiples of 1/2 the wavelength can have a significant difference varying between 20 and 60% - (PDF) Cavitation intensity of water under practical ultrasonic cleaning conditions.

Otherwise, for just basic ultrasonic cleaning, this article is excellent awad-reprint II, written by the VP of Crest Ultrasonics.  

Take care,

Neil

@antinn 

I was unable to find your linked paper

It was hidden in plain sight under Wayback Machine

Cleaning is caused by shock wave from the collapse of cavitation bubbles, see Wayback Machine for a scientific exploration

Thanks for the article you referenced.  Of maximum relevance to this topic, I'd like to quote a sentence from it:

The released energies reach and penetrate deep into crevices, blind holes and areas that are inaccessible to other cleaning methods.

If that includes microgrooves then my thoughts are that ultrasonic should be the primary method for cleaning records, with vacuum used to assist drying as an option.

Do you have a feel about the smallest particle size we should be worried about? Sub-micron?