Recently I bought some used vinyls on ebay to relive some youth memories. Also I like to use my lovely Beogram 4002 once in a while. Spotify is cool, but just does not have that vinyl feel...;-). Unfortunately, once the vinyls arrived I had to acknowledge that they were in bad shape...one of my less exciting ebay experiences. They played pretty rough, lots of dirt in the grooves. Not many scratches, though. Anyway, emboldened by a recent experience with Mr. Clean "Magic Eraser" pads, which allowed me to restore the brushed aluminum panels of my various Beomasters to practically new condition, I put one of the pads to one of the dirty ebay records. A previously unthinkable way to treat a cherished record, but here I did not have any choice! To my amazement, the record now sounds much better. The distortion in the voice parts and trebles is much reduced, also crackle is much less.
Here is what I did:
I wet the pad, then put it with relatively firm pressure on the record, which was situated on a towel on the floor. I moved the pad in concentric motions around the tracks covering the entire disc. I took care to not touch the label in the middle to not damage it. A little bit of foam developed from the detergent of the pad. One can feel how the micro foam grips into the grooves-the pad 'wants' to move in a concentric orbit around the record because of this. After a few rounds, I rinsed the record thoroughly with tap water and then with some filtered water from the fridge to remove minerals from the tap. The label got a bit wet/drenched by this treatment, but it dried after without visible traces.
Then I put the record back on the towel and dried it in concentric motions with an old t-shirt.
Done.
After this I also cleaned the stylus of the 4002 with the pad. Under the microscope I observed how the crud came off...the needle looks now like new again. Quite impressive!
Mr. Clean Rocks!!...;-). Enjoy!
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