Vinyl accesories and their effectiveness - let's discuss!

[scott wurcer]

I use the 'Whole Foods' clear window cleaner (really slopped on) and an old LAST factory brush, I have a large supply from years ago, quickly followed by a generous DI water rinse. I have sent several of my LP restorations to friends and they have been very pleased. Unfortunately, I think I have seen the stuff colored blue recently ( I guess if Windex had a design patent it would have run out anyway).

[nate]

A while back I borrowed a Boston Audio MAT-1 from my local dealer and all he got back was a check. I experienced much lower surface noise and improvements in all aspects of playback. It's not cheap, but it actually works. A couple of my friends and I did an A/B and they could clearly hear the improvements.
http://www.boston-audio.com/mat1.html
Nate

[kamis]

This thread is about vinyl accessories ,and for me the best,not strictly speaking vinyl accessory, is a good contact cleaner used on contact on cartridge signal path. Cartridge pins, headshell pins,tonearm base pins etc. need periodic cleaning in spite of precious metal plating.Many owners of good analogue systems are lazy to clean these contacts,which is honestly speaking tedious job.They have never heard their systems in full potential. Difference in sound quality is huge especially with moving coil cartridges. Less noise,more low level details etc. Most others tweaks look trivial compared with contact cleaning.Contact cleaner brand is not so important as cleaning habit. Try to clean turntable power supply connectors,improvements are sometimes almost dramatic.But there is a real danger of induced depression, when one realize what he(or she) lost all these years.

[kevinkr]

A couple of things:

A decent turntable mat needn't cost a fortune. You can build one using cork or buy one made from various materials. I am currently using a Torqmat II (eBay) on my TD-125, including shipping this was under $20 - and is way better than the stock mat.

Record cleaning machine which you can buy or build. I built mine (see record cleaning machine threads) and I can't imagine how I got along without it.

Cleaning fluids are pretty expensive, mine is homebrew and consists of distilled water, isopropyl alcohol, and Kodak Photo-Flo. Ratio is about 12% alcohol, and a couple of drops of Photo-Flo per liter. Rinse with distilled water.

Budget version of the VPI record cleaner brush for use with my rcm.

[d to the g]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned a digital scale yet.

I'm leaning towards this one ... anyone other recommendations?

[woodturner-fran]

That looks like a great deal.

Just beware. I have a scales that I bought from ebay. The thing works AOK, absolutely reproducibale and I use a calibrated weight to check it every now and then.

It works perfectly with my HOMC cart, I was very happy. Then I changed to a LOMC and the thing kept saying I had the right weight (ie VTF) but the needle was skipping. Turns out the weight was way to low. Reason: The magnet in the LOMC was affecting the scales. I only figured this out after much head scratching!!


Maybe shoot them an enquiry or if they have a return policy if it doesn't work out.

Fran

[Aengus]

shallbehealed asked:

anyone other recommendations?

I bought the Canrong one and it works well. I bought mine from Decibel Hi-Fi in Australia so they could ship it with the cartridge they re-tipped for me, and their service was very good - nice guys to deal with. Also, their price is Aus$85, which is about Can$74 (US$70). Seems like a good price - UHF Magazine's store has it here for Can$185; but there may be cheaper US sources.

Regards.

Aengus

[edit: here's a picture]