Welcome to Vinyl LP Care

Specialists in the Care, Maintenance and Preservation of Vinyl Records

We are a service dedicated to the preservation, maintenance and restoration of your precious vinyl records. Many audiophiles, music lovers and collectors alike agree that the best way to listen to music is via the medium of vinyl records. Despite the advent of digital formats during the past thirty five years the vinyl format has endured and has gained momentum and renewed popularity in recent years. Anybody who is serious about vinyl will know that the vinyl format never did go away and die despite the best efforts of the major record labels in their haste to embrace all things digital.

The need to preserve, maintain and care for vinyl records and keep them in optimum condition cannot be over emphasised. It is remarkable that a large number of music lovers and collectors of vinyl records do not even know of the existence of dedicated record cleaning machines. In order to hear vinyl records at their very best, a tried, tested and safe cleaning regimen is mandatory. Unfortunately, the majority of these machines are manufactured in low volumes by specialist audiophile companies and are accordingly quite expensive for the average vinyl collector /enthusiast.

It is with this in mind that we offer a Vinyl Cleaning Service that includes state of the art ultrasonic cleaning via the U.S. designed and Korean manufactured Klaudio KD-CLN-LP200 Vinyl Cleaning Machine. We also use a VPI HW-17F Vacuum Record Cleaning Machine. We use specially formulated laboratory vinyl enzyme agents to rid your vinyl records of all types of contamination including organic contamination that infests the grooves of your precious records and degrades the playing experience with spurious and unwanted noise. Side by side we know of no better cleaning combination that will get even your new records to sound their very best and will restore older and well cared for records in your collection to their original performance.

When we use the term ‘well cared for’ we are referring to vinyl records that have not been abused or damaged from careless handling and that have been played on correctly set up arm and cartridge combinations on your turntable. Damage to records from careless handling or incorrectly aligned cartridge/arm combinations cannot be undone. We can also offer you the benefit of our 45 years of experience of handling vinyl records properly and carefully so that they remain in pristine condition for your continued and ongoing enjoyment.

We also offer a Vinyl Flattening Service for records that are warped or misshaped. We use dedicated Japanese Machines designed by ORB Japan and marketed by Orb, Furutech and Air Tight. While largely very successful, vinyl flattening is a mysterious art and some records require treatment over and above what other records require. Broadly, U.S. manufactured vinyl LP records that have become warped through poor storage or from tight shrink wrapping (when new) can be a challenge and require special treatment to achieve a satisfactory degree of flatness.

In this regard, we would strongly recommend the use of a clamp on your turntable. Records manufactured by GZ Vinyl in the Czech Republic between the years 2008-2010 may not be suitable for the flattening process due to what may have been a deviation or departure from standard vinyl formulations used in vinyl LPs manufactured there. A prime example of this is the 2LP Anniversary Edition of U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ released in 2008 or any other U2 LPs released around the years in question. Unfortunately, this excludes some of the Universal Music catalogue from that period from our vinyl flattening service. We have found no issues with any other vinyl formulation and since 2005 we have successfully flattened hundreds of vinyl LPs manufactured in Japan, U.K., Germany, Holland, France, Spain, U.S.A., Canada and Ireland etc. by numerous major and independent record labels!

We can offer you advice on how to resolve your eccentric or off-centre vinyl records due to poorly centred spindle holes. Eccentric LPs are LPs where the spindle hole is not correctly centred and this causes your arm/cartridge to weave in an in and out motion while the record revolves on your turntable. In the worst cases, it can cause pitch problems and degrade the listening experience. It is not doing your cartridge and stylus much good either! We have a leaflet available and a tool to help you resolve this common problem. Again we have experience ‘in the field’ at correcting this rather annoying problem on vinyl records.

We cannot guarantee that every warped vinyl LP can be corrected using either the ORB DF-01 or DF-03 Disc Flatteners. Warps that have been caused by exposure to heat or result from serious manufacturing errors are not reversible and cannot be resolved. We will however try to flatten any suitable LP for you and if we are unsuccessful, we will charge a flat charge of €10 only based on time spent and electricity used. The process will, of necessity, have involved multiple cycles.