Does the Step 4 final rinse for Walker Prelude help?

Doug, I appreciate all of your efforts to elucidate and educate, but I'll have to disagree with your speculations about the optimum sequencing of the Step 4 Rinse, and I won't choose to experiment with it. The point of the Step 4 Rinse is exactly that: a final finishing rinse that reaches deeply into the groove to remove any remaining residue. There is no value to using it after the enzyme step but before the Step 2 surfactant cleaning step because of all the materials in any of the various surfactant cleaning fluids. As witnessed by all of our shared experiences with purer and purer water rinses, the Ultra-pure rinse eliminates residues better than plain distilled water. From my listening experiences with it, and from what Lloyd says he's doing with the formulation, the Step 4 Rinse moves us another step further ahead.
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Well, until Lloyd Walker chimes in with info as to what is added to the "Step 4 rinse" (he doesn't have to give ratios or quantities), Doug's speculation in the first response would seem to me to be much more plausible and realistic than other ideas put forward here.

Think about it: it makes absolutely no sense to follow an ultrapure water rinse with anything else other than another ultrapure water or a "more" ultrapure water rinse, if you will. By adding anything to the ultrapure you would be diminishing, not enhancing, its efficacy as both a solvent and a rinse and greatly raising the possibility of leaving both a residue and a sonic signature.

I'm not saying the Step 4 is not effective, just that I doubt it is, in fact, anything more than pure or purer water than the Step 3. No one has to sell me on the merits of ultrapure-I've been using it now as the final stage of cleaning for a couple of years, usually doing 2 passes with it and I have no problem believing that more passes may improve sound quality any more than I have no problem believing a 2nd or 3rd cleaning with the right technique and fluids may well improve things with many records.

I do have a problem with what the record cleaning companies are charging for ultrapure water, but if the market will bear it, so be it.

I tend to believe that Jim (and perhaps partly Paul) designed AVIS, just like Lloyd Walker designed his cleaners to be used in a certain succesion.

That the following step compliments the preceeding step. Jim P. has verbally enforced these beliefs personally to me.

Lloyd should at least explain what ingredients are in this last step, without giving away proprietary info.

We would all assume, tht the purest water rinse would be the final step, removing any loosened contaminants-residues left behind by prior cleaning processes?

I find it odd, that some sort of inal step would be better than a purewater rinse? I of course am not a disbeliever, dosagreeing what others have "heard". Markd

Guys, it is hardly true that a rinse with ultra-pure water leaves nothing behind. There is the friction of vinyl and the static electric charge on the record. I can remember when Lloyd recommended GrooveGlide and certainly the Talisman removing static charges have benefit. I have used both and find the benefits of Step Four exceeds them. I continue to use the Talisman, but do find it has less effect now.

While you guys fret about how this can be, I will keep doing a final rinse with Step Four on my previously Preclude treated records and enjoying them. If your ears tell you there is a benefit, shouldn't you conclude that your logic and theory must be wrong?

"Guys, it is hardly true that a rinse with ultra-pure water leaves nothing behind. There is the friction of vinyl and the static electric charge on the record. I can remember when Lloyd recommended GrooveGlide and certainly the Talisman removing static charges have benefit. I have used both and find the benefits of Step Four exceeds them. I continue to use the Talisman, but do find it has less effect now."

I fail to see any logic in the above statement. Lubricating the record groove or eliminating the static charge both have absolutely nothing to do with getting the record clean. If you want to argue they can make the record sound better, I suppose that's fine (although there are people that have used Groove Glide that do not like what it does-certainly makes sense to eliminate static though if you have static issues) but they both have nothing to do with making the record sound better by making it cleaner which apparently is what the Step 4 does or is purported to do.

If that is indeed what it does, I'd just be interested in hearing why, if it is more than ultrapure water, it is to be used following an ultrapure water rinse as opposed to before it and what it contains, without, of course giving away any proprietary secrets.