Comments on Profile Post by yotacowboy

https://degritter.com/ looks pretty cool.

Speaking from experience, the shipping cost on Degritter is... substantial. I would recommend simple and robust vacuum based cleaner for the tour i.e. something with as few parts as possible.

You could probably almost charge a rental. Keep it for a month, clean all your vinyl, send to the next person. Once it is clean, it should be good for a bit and then you shouldn't have use a vacuum type table for a few years if kept away in clean sleeve.

I don’t know who to trust on the matter, some claim after 38khz you can cause damage others near twice that at around after 80 as is the degritter, while some don’t actually clean. I’m sure someone knows the resonant frequency of records where they can break down. But it’s all a pain besides a brush

Basically like a vinyl cleaner rental service just for the community? I’d be down with that.

@famish99 what's "substantial"? I mean, if something like the degritter is worth the cost, i wouldn't mind a rental fee plus $100-ish for shipping. NB, I'm not saying it should be the degritter we'd potentially choose, but we'd need to square with an appropriate/reasonable shipping cost and regular wear items/maintenance costs.

Folks seem to be getting good use of the Humminguru (reviewed on here and on Steve Hoffman forums), and that's closer to $400-500.

just to add, here's my conundrum: cost amortized over library plus frequency. I've got ~300 LPs (so, roughly 600 actual records) and to clean all of them, plus new sleeves, equates to a certain dollar amount per slab'o'vinyl. It'd be cool if friends could have access to a $5-8/record cost of cleaning (and a higher quality of cleaning) for $1-2/record.

I think it's an interesting idea--a loaner community cleaner--but, in my experience, sometimes an LP needs a few cleans or it gets dusty again somewhere along the way. I'd probably want a decent cleaner around in perpetuity, rather than a loaner.

Having owned, well, too many cleaning devices, I'd go with a Spin Clean (first step for really dirty discs) and either a Pro-ject VCS or a Humminguru. Ain't cheap, but that will pretty much take care of all your needs.

I'm open to this if we can afford it. Keep me posted in the main loaner request thread. :)

Though I'm confused by what @Gazny said, and why the Humminguru isn't good enough to clean your records, while being not much more expensive than shipping something and renting it.

@rhythmdevils Gazny is referring to the vibration rate of the ultrasonic cleaner. There’s debate in the vinyl community about which vibration rates might actually do damage to the record itself instead of just removing dirt from the grooves.

I guess I've read up extensively (obsessively) on the ultrasonic cleaning damage debate, and the prevailing opinion is that it doesn't. I've never heard the claimed loss of high frequencies from cleaning myself. And in cases where thorough US cleaning can take a record from VG to VG+ or better, the risk is certainly worth it.

To my mind, unless you have a huge collection of used LPs that need cleaning, something like the Degritter is proportionally too pricy. The Humminguru or similar generic tank and spinner will achieve similar results for much less $$.

I've not messed with the Degritter personally, however.

The Degritter is a huge and heavy box (like 50lbs), it'll be roughly $200 to ship it halfway across the country, let alone insured and coast to coast.