On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 12:51:53AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > AFAIK, any old dish soap that comes out of a bottle today will be fine. > Dishwasher soap OTOH, is pretty darned caustic, which probably won't do > the label (or the velvet & your skin for that matter) any good at all. > Use the velvet going with the grooves, and rinse with lots of warm > water at kitchen faucet spray pressures before the final rinse with > distilled. Its clean when you can see rainbows in the grooves as it > dries. Note however that I'm referring to vinyl records, not old > shellac 78's which will absorb an amazing amount of water. Those I've > never used more than a velvet pad and just dampened it, rinseing it out > when it shows dirt. Back velvet, not showing the dirt all that well > shouldn't be used. If you can find it, a light colored mohair > frizay(spelling checker please) would be even better as its fibers will > stand higher and straighter, reaching into the grooves even better, but > be gentle with it too. Thanks for the info. > Removing as much grit from the grooves as you can, before its pounded > into the vinyl by the passing of the diamond needle, is a very > desirable thing. Once embedded in the groove walls, its essentially > there forever. A well produced LP of yesteryear, on a good turntable & > good arm & needle, can easily do 55+ db of snr, with some approaching > 70 db, but they were rare indeed. That takes either a weathers > turntable, or an old fairchild battleship but I doubt any of them > survive today. Today, Techniqs is the best but its 20 db noisier than > those were and has arm resonances you can actually see. Its a lost art > I'm afraid. I like the Linn Sondek but as far as I know you can't play 78's, You could only play 45's by adding an attachment to the motor spindle. Thanks for the insight. When I worked for Telecom, I commisioned some broadcast circuits from the local radio station and there were a few old broadcast magazines from the 60's and they were interesting reading, esp the techniques that were used with what little was available at the time. -- Chris. ======
