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Shoutout to the guy in Phoenix who watched me scrub a stylus for 20 minutes and said nothing
I used to be the guy who cleaned his records with a dry brush and thought that was enough. Then last month I picked up a copy of Rumours at a flea market in Phoenix for $3 and the first spin sounded like bacon frying. I sat there with a stylus brush for 20 minutes, going at it like it was a toothbrush, and this older guy at the next table just watched me the whole time. Finally he says, 'You're polishing the diamond, not cleaning the groove.' He pulled out a little bottle of fluid and a carbon fiber brush and showed me a record cleaning setup that costs maybe $25 total. I felt like an idiot because I'd been treating the symptom, not the cause. The real fix is wet cleaning the vinyl itself, not just scrubbing the needle every time it sounds bad. My whole collection sounds different now, like someone lifted a blanket off the speakers. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize you were fixing the wrong part the whole time?
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ivan23023d ago
I read a post from a guy who restores old jukeboxes and he said the same thing, that 90 percent of bad sound comes from dirty vinyl and not the needle. He said a dirty groove just grinds all that junk right into the stylus anyway, so you are basically re-dirtying it every spin. That old guy at your table gave you the real answer and it cost him nothing to share it. I grabbed a cheap spray bottle and some microfiber cloths after reading that and my thrift store finds stopped popping so much. The needle brush still has its place but it is more of a touch up than a cure. Makes you wonder how many records got tossed over the years because nobody told the owner this.
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