Vinyl Cleaning

We offer a professional Vinyl LP Record cleaning service

We currently use the Klaudio KD-CLN-LP200 Vinyl Cleaning Machine which is designed in the United States of America and manufactured to industrial standards in Korea. This machine does not use any special liquids or cleaning agents unlike the Audiodesksysteme Gläss from Germany. It simply uses water, in our case laboratory grade de-ionised water, in a washing cycle followed by a drying cycle that can span between 1-5 minutes respectively and is user defined. To say that this machine is remarkable is not hyperbole! We intend to add an Audiodesk Ultra Sonic Cleaner in the very near future.

The ultrasonic cleaning process can rid the record grooves of factory pressing residues that remain in the grooves long after manufacture and degrade the listening experience with noise such as ticks and pops. We have U.S. manufactured LPs from every decade that now play as silently as a Japanese LP pressing following a cycle on the Klaudio. It gets our top recommendation. Please refer to the video footage to see how this machine works in practice on the following link. www.klaudio.com

We can also ultrasonically clean your 10” (Mini LPs) and 7” (Singles) through the use of specially developed Adaptors by Klaudio that enable these vinyl formats to be safely cleaned in the Klaudio KD-CLN-LP200 Vinyl Cleaning Machine. If you have Vinyl on any of these formats that need to be professionally cleaned, please contact us for a quotation.

While Ultra Sonic Cleaning is ‘the new kid on the block’ in terms of vinyl cleaning, we would never disregard our trusty VPI-HW-17F Vacuum Record Cleaning machine. This is manufactured by specialist high end audio company VPI Industries Inc. in New Jersey, U.S.A. and represented state of the art vinyl cleaning before the introduction of Ultra Sonic Cleaning in 2013. This machine and its cleaning process is remarkable at removing surface dirt and contamination including mold from vinyl records.

We use a specially formulated vinyl enzyme cleaning agent called ‘Vinyl-Zyme’ manufactured in the U.S.A. The ‘Vinyl-Zyme’ is dissolved in de-ionized water from a concentrate at appropriate levels and is used in the cleaning process; the drying process removes the Vinyl-Zyme liquid from the record surface and this is followed by a rinse with laboratory grade de-ionised water to remove any traces of the cleaning liquid followed by a second drying process.

This is good enough to remove 90%+ of vinyl contaminants in our experience but only Ultra Sonic Cleaning can go further and remove the last traces of factory manufacturing residues from your precious LPs. We use both systems side by side and achieve marvellous results. Vinyl sounds as clean as CD but much better of course! We do not use or recommend the use of cleaning fluids that use alcohol agents in any of our cleaning formulations.

Why on earth do we bother with vinyl? It is a great sounding but very finicky format, prone to all kinds of problems such as off centre pressing, surface defects like non-fill, pits or depressions on the vinyl surface from dirt getting into the plating baths, scratches from careless handling or damage from harsh Card Printed Inner Sleeves. Card Printed inner Sleeves impair vinyl surfaces causing scuffs and hairline scratches, even from new. One of the most annoying and troublesome of all vinyl defects is the warped or misshaped disc.

This can range from a gentle undulation to a serious edge warp or to a warp that we refer to as a ‘potato chip’ type warp. Added to that is another type of warp, namely a dished LP Record which means that the shape of the LP is concave and one side of the disc is in the shape of a dish or a bowl. Vinyl flattening devices are designed and manufactured by ORB Co. Ltd. in Osaka, Japan to the usual impeccable Japanese design and build standards and the technology is licenced to companies such as Furutech and Air Tight. ORB itself, Furutech and Air Tight market a number of these units solely designed and used to correct warped records and restore them to their original shape, which is flat!

Our Vinyl Flattening Service is only available for 12” LP/EP (33 rpm/45 rpm), whether light (less than 120 gram), normal (120 gram) or heavy weight vinyl (180 gram to 200 gram). 10” and 7” Vinyl is not supported.

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.