Record Cleaning Machine Fluid

I prefer the Audio Intelligent products, they flow better, clean better and cover the record, where the RRL stuff always beaded up.

It seems that the old adage "you must empty your tea cup before it can be filled with the new" really worked for Paul Frumkin. Being a lawyer, he came on to this project with his teacup empty. I remember him really soaking up (pun intended) my advice on ultrapure water production. I'm about to receive some products he offered me back then. Now I have a used Record Doctor RCM and have all my remaining albums together in one place. From what he was explaining to me back then the combined action of the soap used and ultrapure water make an effective combination that does not have much surface tension, yet has adequate cleaning action.

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I prefer the Audio Intelligent products, they flow better, clean better and cover the record, where the RRL stuff always beaded up.

We've discussed this here so many times over the last 3-4 years.

RRL is SUPPOSED to bead up. It was designed to bead up, and it works better because of that. Solutions that flow easily and don't bead up are, by definition, harder to rinse and vacuum off the vinyl. Low surface tension is not a one-way street to successful performance. Like most all design parameters, it can be taken too far.

My experience is that AIVS went too far. Its rinsability is clearly inferior to RRL's. It left audible residue that took multiple rinse/vac cycles to remove. That is why I bring it out for hardship case LP's only. In our experience RRL (+ Vinyl Zyme) is the better performing product. YMMV of course, but I didn't want anyone believing that "beading up" is a downside with RRL. It's not. It's a carefully selected design feature.

"Beading Up" is just about as useful as "suds" in a soap formulation.

Suds have NO practical cleaning effect. None, nada, zip, zero. But to the user it looks real cool and it must be doing something. Any soap or cleaning formulation can be made "suds free" with a small amount of anti foam (Dow Corning is a big player in these products) without any degradation of performance.

Perception is reality folks and if it looks like it's cleaning better, it must be.

Beading up is just a visual indicator of surface tension. The more easily a liquid beads up, the higher its surface tension.

Is beading up useful per se? Of course not, no more than suds and bubbles. But in RRL it's an indicator that surface tension has not been reduced to a level that impairs removal of the liquid by vacuuming. Fluids with excessively low surface tension (ie, that don't bead up) adhere so closely to the record surface that they cannot readily be vacuumed away.

Thanks Doug and I'm consistently amazed at audiophiles, as a group, believing that a product costing $20-$50/pint or quart or what have you will provide better performance than a basic cleaning solution discounting far more salient factors such as good brushes and vacuuming.

As I cynically stated in another thread, we're cleaning plastic not cashmere.