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Topic: Cleaning 78s

  29th May 2019, 2:22 AM
fantasista

Member since Feb 2015
435 Points
j.monk wrote:
I used some vinyl cleaning product for my very first 78 and that was a disaster, obviously ! :thumbsup:

Though, the sound quality did not much deteriorate.
It's a dub, and I bought an original Brunswick copy since.

Now, I do mostly like Scrough: I use water with a small drop of washing up liquid (avoid too much foam !), and I rub the record with a sponge following the grooves (unlike what Bussard does on his video), then I rinse, I use a paint brush, and rinse again, but I dry the record immediately with a microfiber fabric, as I had pretty bad experiences when I let the records dry by themselves on a plate rack.
Works pretty well for me, and I can play my records pretty quickly after the cleaning.
Ah, well, I'm glad for your sake that you didn't ruin anything irreplaceable. I tend to learn things the hard way so I can sympathize.

I've also seen that video of Joe Bussard scrubbing records in his laundry sink... it's a little hard to argue with a guy who has such a fantastic collection and has been doing this for 60 years, but I felt pretty sorry for those records nonetheless. :laugh:

Thanks to everyone for their advice, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'll do - I already clean vinyl records in largely the same way, so it shouldn't be too hard. For rinsing, do you just rinse them under a running tap?
Juke Jules wrote:
I've done as Scrough described, adopting the procedure from cleaning LPs
Be careful only to do this on the traditional shellac with chalk filler type of 78 or any type of vinyl. Early construction techniques during the experimental period often used materials which would be destroyed by water, such as shellac with wood flour filler. Meths or isopropanol dried off quickly could be safe-ish, but preferably avoid contact with any fluid.

Thanks very much for the heads up. Most of my my records are from the 1930s-40s, and my oldest dates to 1915, so I'm assuming I'm in the clear with regards to water.


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