so i'm a youngin' who has amassed a reasonably large record collection in the last few months, but as i live in the 'naught'ies, as opposed to say, the seventies, i have no idea how to keep the bastards clean without scratching them. Can someone shed a little much-appreciated light on the subject?

Find yourself a Discwasher system.

http://www.sleevetown.com/vinyl-cleanin ... d-cleaning (scroll down a bit).

i've got one of them around here somewhere but i just can't find it. It was my dad's.

[img][650:426]http://www.rubyriver.com/Sizzler/fire.jpg[/img]

soft cotton dish cloth, liquid dish soap diluted in warm water. play the record while damp -- debris in the grooves will be disturbed. rinse with luke warm water.

Actually, playing a record wet may not be a good idea. It plays with lower noise while wet, but can mess the record up where if you wanna play it dry in the future, it will have noise and you'll then always wanna play it wet. At least that's what I've read several places, so just giving you a heads-up on the possibility. Could be bullshit as far as I know because I only play the things wet if its a really old thing with a tone of noise on it and I douse the crap out of it to play once while recording to a CD.

If you only buy new shiny records, you may not need to get too carried away and could likely just brush them off dry before playing unless you wanna get more involved, but if you wanna clean up old records and such, you could use something like this...

http://discdoc.com/

It does a great job, and costs a bit of money, but I clean a ton of records with the stuff and after buying a quart of it like 4 years ago, I still have quite a bit left.

There are others on the market, but this is the one I have experience with and it works great for me. If you use it, just make sure you use it diluted and rinse well or you will leave residue on your records.

I'm not a big fan of the homemade cleaners, just because I feel more secure using something

Saw this on a record collector's forum a while back...tried it and it seems to work well.

In an empty spray bottle use a 1:5 mixture of Simple Green and water. Simple Green can be found in most stores with the cleaning products, is biodegradable and completely safe.

I was leary at first, but the solution seems to work great. I just spray a few small squirts on and use a soft cotton cloth to wipe away.

I believe Ron Popeil invented some sort of device to clean them...

I'm guilty of playing records wet, but only when I'm burning a song onto a mix. I've had my Discwasher brush for 25 years, it's a god-send.

DO NOT LISTEN to these people telling you to use tap water to clean off records! There is so much crap in tap water, it just grinds stuff into the soft vinyl.

I believe you can use distilled water safely, but I'd check into this, first.

Jesus, people.

Another vote for Discwasher...my brush is about 10 years old.

I don't remember saying tap water.

Tap water is delicious.

Uhh, Finch, that "soft vinyl" reproduces sound through contact with a DIAMOND tip that's ground to a pretty decent point.

But your advice is still sound- the contaminants in tap water can stay on the record surface and increase surface noise, instead of the desired goal of decreasing it.

For the DIY-inclined, here you go:

Mix 4 parts de-ionized (or at least distilled) water with 1 part 91% isopropyl alcohol (nothing less pure and NOT "rubbing alcohol" that contains other ingredients) and a minuscule drop of dishwashing liquid. Shake the mix, and if it bubbles up, you used too much dishwashing soap. Start over. This is an easy, cheap, and fairly effective solution for record-cleaning that I think came from the Library Of Congress.

Put yr rekkid on a soft towel and put about a tablespoon of cleaning fluid on surface 1. Use a boar's bristle paint brush that has been trimmed down to about 2" bristle length, and paint that fluid around the record surface, going in both directions. Then, use soft clean cloths to remove the liquid and dry the record surface. Some people like to rinse with distilled water. I've never found it necessary. Repeat for side 2.

A Discwasher brush, or one of those dry record cleaning brushes should always be on hand when playing records, as well as a brush suitable for cleaning the stylus periodically.

what does that mean? what does that meeeeean?!