I found a recipe and was amazed by the results!
It may be obvious to some people, and they may know better ways of doing it, but for me, who didn’t know about it, a whole new world opened up, and I’m sharing it with anyone else who doesn’t know and might be interested.
It turns out that the unbearable scratching and noise produced by old, battered records, especially ones bought second-hand (and badly second-hand at that), are to a very large extent not caused by irreparable damage, but by dust particles that the needle finds on them and which don’t come off with the simple cloth/brush we use to clean them before each play. Even the needle jumping was eliminated.
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Deionised water. Alternatively, apparently, we can use ordinary water, boil it and let it cool. It seems that the main thing is for it not to contain limescale. As it happened, we had a filter system at home that filters out almost everything, including limescale (thoroughly confirmed by kettles and so on, which have no residue at all), so I used that straight away.
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Mild washing-up liquid. As it happened, I also had one made from green olive-oil soap, which was perfect.
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A… microfibre towel. Don’t be fooled: it simply mustn’t leave fluff behind. A cotton T-shirt is just the thing. I used one sleeve for washing, the other for rinsing, and the rest of the T-shirt for drying.
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In a bowl, one cup of the “good” water with 2–3 drops of soap. The first time, it seemed like too much to me; this bottle dispenses big drops. The second time, I put in a small drop, and it was too little: I couldn’t tell from the smell which sleeve had soapy water on it and which had plain water. You work it out by experimenting… Dissolve the soap by stirring gently, without making it foam.
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In another, larger bowl, plenty of the same water, plain.
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I dip one sleeve into the soapy water. I wring it out. I gently wipe the entire record in circular motions.
Now, here we can of course see that if the motions are completely circular, we don’t remove the dirt; we merely move it around, and in the end leave it gathered in one spot. So the motions shouldn’t be entirely circular, but slightly snail-like, so that in the end we draw the dirt out without going too much against the direction of the grooves. Just like with the dusting brush before each play.
With small 45s, this job is very easy. With my good hand, I hold the record with the cloth, on both sides, and with my bad hand I turn it. With the large ones, that won’t work; I’ll have to place them on another cloth and rub (gently!) in circular, snail-like motions from above, one side only.
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I dip the other sleeve into the clean water, wring it out, and do the same.
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I do the same again with a dry cloth.
For large records, I do 6, 7 and 8 first on one side and then the same on the other.
- I leave the record standing fairly upright in a shady, grassy place, for example in the gap between two books on the shelf, for about half an hour.
That’s it!
Fingerprints didn’t come off; if anything, a few that had been hiding beneath the dust were revealed. I didn’t dare try anything more drastic (more soap, more rubbing, less wringing-out, etc.), but fingerprints don’t affect the sound.
The difference in the sound was like night and day.
I tried it for the first time with a record that was in such a terrible state that there wasn’t much fear of making it even worse, and which I didn’t particularly care about because I mainly liked it as a beautiful object. Where I least expected it, it was transformed from a decorative item into something useful as well! So I got over my fear of trying it and did it with other records too. A few at a time, because I don’t have anywhere to dry many of them during step 9.