Record Cleaner Usage Tips?

[David Meek]

I recently acquired a Nitty Gritty 1.5FI record cleaner.



Do any of you use the Nitty Gritty's? If so, have you picked up any helpful hints about their use?

One of the things I've come across in my readings is a suggestion to manually pre-clean an album BEFORE putting it on the Nitty Gritty for the first time. After that (assuming you immediately store the record in a dust-free sleeve after playing), only normal use of the Nitty Gritty is needed for that album. The reason for this is to minimize the "gunk" that gets trapped in the brushes of the NG - cleaning multiple albums that have substantial amounts of dust in the grooves will pack the brushes quickly.

Your comments and observations will be welcome. TIA.




David - HTGuide flunky
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[Burke Strickland]

How did they propose to "manually" clean the LPs in advance? Was it with the kind of carbon fiber brush Joe showed us at Audio Concepts? Or a high power blast of air to dislodge the dust? You certainly would not want to gunk up the grooves with a manual wet "cleaning" system.

Possibly a better way to deal with the build up of dust and gunk on the Nitty Gritty's cleaning "lips" is to clean them off between uses and order a bunch of extras. They can be cleaned off a couple of times before they start to lose their effectiveness, but it us good idea to have extras on hand. (Parth will be happy to order those for you.)

Burke.

Burke

[David Meek]

Parth will be happy to order those for you

Really? Oh, who is Burke Burke?




David - HTGuide flunky
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[Burke Strickland]

who is Burke Burke?

"Burke Burke" is someone who's information and insights are twice as profound as the singular "Burke". :>)

[Bob]

I have used the Nitty Gritty machine for quite awhile now and have found that the best results come from using the Orbitrac 2 cleaning system first and then the machine. Since I preclean with the Orbitrac first I only put distilled water in the Nitty Gritty. Since doing this it has been a long time since I have had to replace the pads on the Nitty Gritty.
Once I have cleaned a record once, and always throw away the paper sleeve and replace it with a VRP sleeve, I never bother to do it again. From then on I use a Audioquest anti static brush.
Right now I am listening to The Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" and , this is probably about the 20th time I have played it since first cleaning it and there isn't a pop or hiss to be heard.
By the way, the Orbitrac only comes with two small bottles of cleaning fluid but, I simply replaced the fluid with Disc Doctor fluid. Or you can make your own cleaning fluid.
By the way, am I the only one that likes the above album? I went from thinking that it was not particularly interesting at first to liking it so much I bought the cd for my car.

[Bob]

dreaded double post. sorry.

[Bob]

Sort of along the same line, I highly recommend getting a Zero Dust stylus cleaner. My Clearaudio sigma wood cartridge was pretty expensive and I have been trying to keep it as clean as possible to extend it's life. I thought that I had been doing a pretty good job until I tried a Zero Dust cleaner. Wow, I couldn't beleive the amount of stuff that was deposited on the cleaner after the first time I dipped my needle into it. Made a beleiver out of me on its value as a cleaner.

[David Meek]

Bob, is that the little "blob" of gel you lower the stylus into?




David - HTGuide flunky
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[Bob]

Yes, it looks like clear silicon. I like the idea that there isn't any fluid going up the needle and you aren't using a brush on the needle.
Since I am stuck in Santa Fe for awhile I have been ordering records from Acoustic Sounds and am unable to play them until I get home. It is driving me crazy not being able to listen to them. I have been getting anywhere from 6 to 10 per week and I am thinking about getting my cleaning equipment shipped out so that they will all be cleaned and ready to play when I get home.