Some record cleaning brushes even come with a small stylus brush to help keep your turntable’s needle clean. It’s considered good practice to dry clean a vinyl record before and after playing to prevent any build-up — carbon fiber also has the added benefit of reducing static. Just a few, circular sweeps following the grooves is all it takes. The downside is that you will have to take care in handling the vinyl to not leave fingerprints. Also, these brushes are meant for regular maintenance and not for reaching into the grooves for deep cleaning. After you fill the basin with the cleaning fluid, set a vinyl record within it, typically on a rolling mechanism, leaving the bottom portion submerged. As you slowly spin the record by hand, the grooves pass through the cleaning solution. Don’t let any fluid drip down and ruin the vinyl’s label. As you spin the turntable platter, the wand brushes, loosens, and sucks up dust, particles, and debris. Suction reducers are included to help regulate the flow of air if you own an especially powerful vacuum. These wands also work with wet cleaning methods. Just make sure you use a wet/dry or shop vacuum that can handle liquids. The trick to using wood glue is that it needs to be spread evenly as one continuous, bubble-free piece (a silicone spatula helps). Otherwise, you might have a harder time peeling it off if you’re working with several sections. Make sure that the record is on a flat surface the entire time, and take care to not get any glue on the label. The downside is that you’ll need to wait a day for the glue to harden enough to be safely removed. Then you’ll have to flip the vinyl and repeat the process with the other side. But the upside is that a bottle of glue will set you back only several dollars. The main culprits of filth that eventually find their way into a vinyl’s grooves are airborne particles (e.g. dust, lint, fibers, pollen, etc) and whatever is left on your fingers, including dirt, oil, grease, and even acids. When you play a dirty record, the stylus adds an element of heat as it travels along the grooves. With that heat, the particles and oil combine together to create a hard residue that sticks to the vinyl and stylus. This residue becomes the source of all the distracting noise — clicks pops, hisses — you hear when playing the record. If left unchecked, the music will sound worse as time goes on, and there’s also no way to repair a damaged record. On top of that, you’ll likely have to replace the turntable cartridge sooner than later. It’s not difficult to keep vinyl records clean. You just need to be mindful of the cleaning habit each time you decide to play one. Dry cleaning is good enough to get most all the surface debris — it takes wet cleaning to effectively purify the grooves. Many products assist this process, ranging from comprehensive solutions such as a professional record cleaner to inexpensively effective tools like vinyl brushes. None of them are perfect, as each has its own pros and cons. So it’s up to you to decide which one suits you best. Just remember that any kind of proper cleaning is better than none at all!
