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……..

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