My $80 record cleaning machine was a waste until I tried this

I bought one of those cheap ultrasonic cleaners off eBay for 80 bucks and it did almost nothing for my cut records. The pops and crackle stayed exactly the same. Then I read a forum post about how the records need to spin slower and you need a proper rinse cycle, so I rigged up a motor from an old turntable I had. After one pass with that setup, the noise floor dropped noticeably. Has anyone else had success with a homemade spin setup over a pricey machine?

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angela_shah85d ago

Man, the spin speed thing is so underrated. Here's an angle I bet nobody's brought up: it's not just the speed that matters, it's the dwell time in the bath. A slow spin gives the cavitation bubbles more time to work on the grooves instead of just skating past them. Combine that with a proper rinse and you're basically fixing the two biggest flaws in those cheap units, which is that they spin way too fast and skip the rinse step. The machine was never the problem, the process was.

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