Record Cleaning Fluid Recipes

Having used up about half my bottle of VPI record cleaning fluid in the last couple of weeks, and not really wanting to spend $35 or so on a quart of the Disk Doctor fluid, I thought I'd ask for advice about how to concoct my own record cleaning fluid from scratch. This desire was strengthened when the Disk Doctor himself advised me to get some regular distilled water from the grocery store to use as a part of a record cleaning process. I'd always thought I had to get some kind of triple-purified lab quality stuff from some of scientific supply place and that always got me stumped. Last night I picked up a bottle of 91% isopropyl alcohol from the druggist so it seems I'm part way there in terms of ingredients.

Any suggestions? Or cautions? Seems that i've read advice NOT to use the isopropyl alcohol somewhere...

Also, I'd appreciate any advice from other users of the VPI 16.5 record cleaning machine. How obsessive should I get? Should I follow the scouring with a rinse of distilled water? I've found that cleaning and scouring is neither quick nor easy. And reading that I can basically expect to clean about 100 albums before the velvet on the vacumn tube wears out was also a little discouraging. It's made me look twice at the records I choose to clean to judge if they're really a priority... Thoughts on this?

Markus



[This message was edited by Markus on MONDAY 10 June 2002 at 16:13.

[This message was edited by Markus on MONDAY 10 June 2002 at 16:17.]