Record-playing Rituals?

By Jove, me thought, thou didst protest too much, but now sweet truth is flowing from your lips as honeydew in spring. A pox on all, who forthwith doubt your words.

Hey, anonymity ought to be at least as good for truth-telling as it is for tale-spinning. :-)

I cannot get my latest 3 ebay purchased, solvent (probably alcohol) cleaned records clean on my VPI 16.5 with any solution after three tries. They play okay with lots of surface noise (no scratches) but the stylus picks up (I guess) softened or sticky dust/dirt by the end of a 10" side. I clean the stylus with ExtremePhono cleaner which works 100% of the time. I don't know of cleaners of previously solvent cleaned records (I have about 40 or 50 of 17,000 LPs, on 78s, those are gone as they melted when someone "cleaned" them).

It is quite possible that the vinyl itself is damaged from repeated plays on an improperly aligned phono system. It would not be beyond comprehension that such a system may have been tracking at too high of a force and literally "carved" its' way through the grooves. If that is the case, there is nothing that you can do correct the situation as the vinyl itself is damaged.

Other than that, it sounds as if you purchase lp's that may be in various conditions. You might want to try a trick that Michael Fremer recently investigated and recommends. That is, using a portable hand steamer to loosen the grit followed up by a thorough scrubbing and a rinse.

I also think that Buggtussel's "vinylzyme gold" record cleaner might be worth checking out for such situations. It is enzyme based and may work on some specific "grime" that other alcohol based cleaners can't remove. Sean
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I agree that some sort of manual cleaning, which might include the steam procedure Sean mentions but must include a velvet brush wet scrub, would be in order. I'm a little unclear on this, but since you talk about a 10" side, are these 78's, or another type of record not made of PVC? If they are shellac, I would think the solvents you used in machine cleaning them are probably responsible for any softened condition that might exist at this point. But if they are PVC, or not really softened chemically, then you likely just need to clean them a little more vigoruosly by hand on a flat surface, maybe with a solution that has some detergent component to it. A lot of the surface noise will stay I'm sure, but you should be able to play the records without accumulating gunk on the stylus.