Cleaning vinyl albums

Dear readers, not long ago I told you about the new 1970s stereo system that Wayne put together for us. The thing I didn't mention was the cleaning. Between us we have about 400 old-school record albums. Some of them we kept from the old days, some of them we bought at garage sales and thrift stores. Most haven't been played for 20 or 30 years, and when they were played, they were played a lot. We didn't know much about taking care of things in the old party days - drinks got spilled, records covers doubled as tables, records got left on the turntable for weeks, people smoked like chimneys and flicked ashes all over everything. It was a chaotic time, full of fun and bad habits!

Bottom line is the records are dirty. In truth they are worse than dirty. They are filthy, and filthy records not only don't play well, they can ruin a brand-new old-school needle quicker than anything. They have to be cleaned before they can be played. Drat.

We started out cleaning one or two with water, and then with alcohol, but they didn't get clean. So we went to the internet and, voila!, there was the solution - a Spin-Clean Record Washer. We ordered it from Amazon for $80. Cute as can be, here it is:
 
It's a plastic reservoir with two removable brushes. You fill it with distilled water and add three capfuls of a cleaning fluid that comes with it. Then you rotate the records three times in each direction through the brushes, let the water drip off, and dry them with anti-static cloths. Suddenly the records are like new - no clicks, superficial scratches gone, sound as clean and full as it was when they were right off the shelf. They sound great!

One reservoir-filling will clean 50 records before it gets too dirty to use. So far we've had three 50-record-cleaning sessions. The first time, we had no idea how long it would take and we started too late in the evening. At 3 a.m., we were just finishing (major yawn), because of course we had to play all the records as they got clean. It was a disaster trying to function the next day.

Now we start earlier, and finish before midnight. It's great fun, and more and more of our records are ready to play. What a pleasure!!

Here's Wayne cleaning a record, equipped with his trusty headlamp. Many more records to go, and we're still accumulating . . .

The New 1970s stereo system

Wow, Wayne's really on my good side now. He has found an incredible turntable from the 1970s era (the BEST electronics for playing vinyl) for $25, replaced its stylus (a.k.a. needle...I'm learning new terminology here), researched and found a top-of-the-line pre-amp (who knew you needed a pre-amp as well as an amplifier??) from the same era online for $45, dusted them off, and hooked them all up.

 Now we're finally listening to some of our many hundreds of old record albums. It's fun and the system sounds great!

It wasn't really as easy as it sounds. First we had to clear out the little library, where we keep all our records and CDs and books on shelves, and where the stereo equipment is housed. That's the part I helped with. We had used that little room as an office for awhile, so it was filled with a desk, a filing cabinet, a computer, and lots of paper. We couldn't even get to the music! Once all that stuff got moved out, voila! It was a music room and library again.

Of course then we had to organize the wires and decide which of the three sets of speakers and amplifiers to keep and where to put them. That was a bit of work, but it was well worth it.

Here's the first record we played (one of my favorites). Yay, Jimmy Cliff and reggae!!




And here are some of the rest of the records. We're still working our way through ...

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