Posted on 08/19/2020 5:31:47 PM PDT by Tacrolimus1mg
A friend of mine has a massive collection, I do mean huge, of vinyl records that has avoided being destroyed by flooding for quite some time despite being stored in a basement. However, we finally had a big one that really did a number on them, and I'm not sure if they're salvageable. A lot of them are valuable and some are even rare, so this is just a shame.
Does anyone have any tips on cleaning up vinyl (not bakelite) records and the best way to determine if they are beyond saving?
Anything would help. Thanks!
Of course, for collectors you just have to keep the center label dry.
It hardly ever failed & didn’t scratch the LP. We didnt clean them till they skipped from crud in the grooves.
That's is exactly what we did when I worked as a DJ in radio. Get them wet, then gently wipe with dish soap and a clean cloth. Then rinse and dry. Got rid of pops and crackles. Not good for a collectable record label, but we only cared about the sound on the air.
I didn't search but I'll bet there are different methods, some good some bad.
Read the comments to see who had success.
Seems like it would work quite well actually.
Back in my FM days we had a couple with seed burns. We had just received Styx II in the mail and was tracking it on air. The feature was short by one track.
I too have a large collection of LPs, something between 2500 and 3000. A general rule of thumb is to store media in an environment comfortable to humans. While I would be heartbroken at the thought of loosing them all, the situation here would force me to make difficult choices.
Time is money and any restoration project is going to require an enormous amount of time on your friend’s part. Unless he has a Beetles butcher cover or something equally rare the records are probably worth much less than his time.
The mold is the very first thing that must be dressed and there are methods that range from enzyme solutions to Clorox, mild dish soap or 90% isopropyl alcohol rinses along with the use of very soft brushes or microfiber cloths and lots of distilled water rinsing between steps.
The PVA glue trick is based on a commercial protect sold for a few years in the late 1970’s by the Empire Phono Cartage company called Disco-Film. It worked, and from what I’ve heard the glue trick does, too. I would think that one should probably do a pre-cleaning first but experiment and see what works best.
May I suggest that your friend should first make a database of what is in his collection and see if the music is available online. Youtube, Spotify and Archive.com should have most popular music published in the last 60 or 70 years. There are ways to download the music to your hard-drive or just log the URL for when you want to listen to the song. Concentrate on salvaging the disks that are not available online as that is an indicator of rarity.
Yes, an LP is going to sound better than an mp3 but not a damaged LP and I’ve found that by up-sampling an mp3 file and saving as a .wav file the music can sound as good as a CD and you loose those annoying Rice Krispies.
groovewasher.com
If he wants to save them for listening, then get an expensive ultrasonic cleaner (or two) and be prepared to spend some time with the collection.
Or hire a kid and teach the kid about the history of audio.
Hose them down then let them dry out in the sun.
The music will be interesting to listen to afterward.
If that is really the real algore, I hate to agree with him, but he is right. Also, fore a more long term solution...
I don’t not know where this one is made, though—I suspect there are some made in other places besides china
I’m sure he has digital copies or CD’s of a vast majority of what he has, but they were handed down from his father, who bought many of them new. Our group of friends can also appreciate the sound of vinyl over digital.
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