A decent set of beginner advice to care of vinyl

wow, what a great selection of information. All of it is much appreciated. I know what I will be doing tonight - a lot of surfing for more info touched upon here. Again, much appreciated.
-terry

The beauty of the Disc Doctor pads - as compared to a machine - is that you can Listen while you Scrub.

I have bought vast amounts of used vinyl. finally got more discriminating in terms of apparent condition, but felt most needed cleaning. I have spent days and days cleaning vinyl, and it's kinda crazy, because I work long hours at my profession. would like comments as to my method of initial cleaning, and then advice as to what to buy to save me those long days in the future. I have a laundry sink, and next to it two large basins. I run cold or warm tap water over the surface, trying to keep label dry, to dislodge dust and grit. Then i wash it with microfiber cloth in first basin of tap water with a drop of Dawn dishwashing liquid and a little denatured alcohol. then I do a final rinse/vigorous swishing in tub of distilled water to wash away the tap water, alcohol, Dawn, etc. lay it out on a towel to dry. when almost dry, I wipe with clean microfiber cloth. Am I doing anything harmful if I rinse really well with the distilled water? even so, I need a faster method, for volume amounts of records. what machine is out there that would cut down my time considerably?

I realize that before RCMs became relatively affordable, wet cleaning may have done more harm than good. Now, it's pretty well-settled that an RCM will produce far better results than a simple "wipe" or dusting with a carbon fiber brush. You can certainly try working without one. Micro-fiber cloths allow far better drying than was possible before, but, having tried both, there is really no comparision, IMO.

Nor is it necessary to become crazy when cleaning records. You will get excellent results with a Nitty Gritty by simply applying their fluid and vacuuming dry. One simple step - apply the fluid to the velvet pad, let the record rotate, then hit the vacuum. That's it. IMO, the results are not as good as when you use a separate pure-water rinse after, but the records are still very clean.

Just bite the bullet (if finances permit) and pick up an RCM. I highly doubt you'll regret it.