Back to Basics
You know something's not right if you're cleaning more than you're spinning
Picture this situation: a 70-year-old rock veteran is giving a record a quick brush when his grandson suddenly shouts:
Grandpa, you’ve got to clean it properly!
Who do you side with?
When I first got into vinyl, I was overwhelmed by the amount of online guides urging newbies to clean records thoroughly all the time.
Despite the open-minded and slightly funky vibes you might get from me, I’m a person who has a deep, perhaps rare, respect for tradition.
Don’t get me wrong—I am very open-minded, especially with certain things. But when it comes to learning, I tend to favour traditional, tried-and-tested methods.
So for a short while I followed this advice. However, I soon realised it was unsustainable.
Interestingly, I also noticed most of these guides were written by people my age, or slightly older, but certainly not by those who were around when vinyl was the dominant format.
Recalculating route
As some of you may know, I have a busy job, a busy life, and I’m unashamedly a gym freak. My packed schedule, plus intense workouts 5-6 times per week, meant it was simply not possible for me to simultaneously enjoy vinyl and follow all this cleaning advice rigorously.
Maybe you don’t work out, but you may play in a band, or have children or other responsibilities that mean you can’t spend all this time cleaning your records.
So what do you do, then?
As someone who respects tradition, I felt something wasn’t right. Vinyl was the dominant format in the 60s, 70s and a good part of the 80s. Surely music lovers back then weren’t cleaning their records as obsessively as current guides seem to suggest?!
You know what? In most cases THEY WERE NOT.
OK, so they were they carelessly tossing them like toys, then…
Well… a lot happened at parties. But all in all, records were kept mostly clean.
How did they do it?
The smart way
By and large, cleaning and maintenance back then was done the smart way. It was so smart that folks didn’t even think of it.
Bear in mind that records weren’t stacked in some dark basement—they were front and centre in every music lover’s household. For most listeners, a quick brush was ingrained in their routine.
Admittedly, many music fans didn’t clean very thoroughly. But because people were using their turntables often, their main focus was enjoying, not cleaning, their records.
Find what works for you
If you were born with a turntable at home, there are things you will have learnt instinctively by watching your parents or older siblings.
Those of us who got into vinyl later in life will need a little bit of guidance.
But this is where things get tricky: if you want vinyl to be an organic, daily pleasure in your life, you cannot be spending more time cleaning than spinning.
Common sense
Most of these modern guides urging you to clean your records obsessively are jumping on the vinyl revival bandwagon. Nothing wrong with that, but you need to be able to understand the difference between the records you inherit and the records you keep as your own.
We live in a world where the albums you find in a car boot sale may have spent years (if not decades) gathering dust in some forgotten corner. So it makes sense to exercise a certain degree of care the first time you bring one of these records home.
However, once you officially adopt it and treat it as part of your own, do you really need to be cleaning it obsessively before and after each spin?
A word to the wise
You will notice many of these modern guides contain affiliate links to cleaning products they recommend (and get commission from), so it’s in their interest to make you believe you have to clean your records all the time.
No judgment either way, and people will have their reasons to clean more or less often. I’ll show you what works for me.
Want a summary? Here goes: Focus on the essentials. Cut out the crap.
Cleaning v. maintenance
A while back I wrote a cleaning guide which is particularly relevant when you’ve just come back home with second-hand vinyl, or when you notice there’s a lot of dust on your records.
In parallel, though, I encourage you to find ways to avoid dust as much as possible. This will help you keep cleaning time to a minimum.
Upright all the way
Often people will urge you to store vinyl records in a certain way to prevent damage. A lesser-known benefit of proper vinyl storage is that it will help you minimise cleaning time.
My favourite storage method is as follows:
Place the disc inside an anti-static inner sleeve and insert it inside the record sleeve with the opening of the inner sleeve facing upwards.
Put the closed record inside an outer plastic sleeve, also with the opening facing up.
Store your record vertically, with the spine facing outwards.
This way, you will have created a tight mini-chamber in each record where dust can’t get in easily.
If you keep your vinyl storage area clean and you spin often, you will notice that, in most cases, a quick brush before spinning will do.
Keep your turntable area clean
I’m not a fan of cleaning records after spinning, purely because, in most cases, I find this is a complete waste of time.
What I tend to clean regularly after spinning, though, is my turntable, especially after a long session.
Close the dust cover when not in use. It’s called a dust cover for a reason!
Minimise exposure
As soon as the record is over, remove it from your turntable and put it back into its sleeves (ideally, in the manner described above: inner sleeve facing up, inside the record sleeve, and inside an outer sleeve, with its opening also facing up, and store vertically).
While it might be tempting to spin your favourite album right before bedtime, you don’t want to wake up to a record that has attracted all the dust in your room while you were sleeping.
Not in use? Put it away. Don’t tempt the dust demons!
Can you think of other tips to minimise cleaning time? See you in the comments!
Thanks for reading/listening. Happy spinning!
Whenever I buy records I always clean them before they go on my TT (used & new). My belief is the cleaner the record, the better it sounds, and the longer life I am granting my stylus, which I dropped some money into (but will be replacing this summer). After they have had a good clean through a SpinWash (20 rotations clockwise & 20 counterclockwise) I then dry them via a Record Doctor VI vacuum. That's my tried and tested method. It is completely manual, which does take time. I also always brush them with a carbon fiber record brush before lowering the stylus onto the LP. Every record gets the carbon fiber before it gets played.
IF a record is very dirty I will spray it with a cleaner that is made locally and sold at record shops, and give it several cleans using a MOFI record cleaning brush and then I put it through the SpinWash method. Depending on how dirty, I sometimes repeat that 2 or 3 times. Just last week I bought a few records and one of them was a '70s boogie funk record which was in VG condition but had a ton of fingerprints, probably from DJs. By the time I was done cleaning it was sparkling and sounded great with virtually no noise.
All my records are on shelving units, housed in outer sleeves, and stored upright. What I haven't done, however, is replace every paper inner sleeve with anti-static ones. I own far too many records to do that and as I have taken the steps to clean the LP very well, the inner is less of a worry (I know that some will take exception because I am putting them back in a "dirty" inner sleeve, but that is also why I use the carbon fiber before every play).
I actually enjoy cleaning records. I find there is a meditative calmness to it, and the results are always very satisfying.
There were so many cheats back in the day.
Zero stat gun
A drop of dish soap and lukewarm ionized water
Old concert t-shirt lightly sprayed with end dust
We were much more diligent with traditional methods at the radio station.
And yes, I am old enough to have been there in the heyday of Ktel records.