Messing about with the Vinyl Passion Dust Buster stylus cleaner I mentioned a few weeks ago – I started inspecting my stylus after playing each side or a record – and saw some  interesting results.  Most worrying was a white dusty residue going part way up the cantilver, found after playing a couple of new and cleaned records.  As yet I haven’t identified the culprit, and not sure I ever will, but one was a brand new pressing from one of the top 2 record pressing plants in the US.  At least the VPDB works a treat.

This, partially, led me to adding in a second layer of cleaning starting with a copy of Nina Simone’s US Colpix pressing of ‘At Newport’ (see earlier blog). Over this last weekend, as I didn’t really feel up to strenuous bike exercise, I conducted a limited experiment using The Disc Doctor’s Miracle Record Cleaner “For the sound you thought you bought!” using fresh DDMRC Pads on a DDMRC Brush, prior to “sonicing” them.

You can see the results in the photo’s below. These have made me stop and question what is the right cleaning process. When I next have time and feel like some mindless repetive task activity I will do some more controlled experiments.  As someone said, clean, clean and clean again – not sure I have the patience for this level of attention that often but in the name of scienc……..

DDMRC Residue after cleaning Nina simone ‘At Newport”

45 mins later as the bubbles break down

DDMRC residue after cleaning a mix of new ‘old’ records and some not so old records – not quite as bad as Nina “At Newport’

Left; DDMRC residue after cleaning 10 pre-cleaned records
Right: DDMRC before use

6 month old RCM rollers and filter vs new