Every record that enters Rekord Room gets cleaned before it is listed. Not rinsed, not wiped on a shirt sleeve: properly cleaned. Over a few hundred records we have settled into a routine that costs almost nothing and works at home. Here it is, along with the shortcuts that destroy records.
The two kinds of cleaning
There is dry cleaning, which you do every single play, and wet cleaning, which a record needs when it first comes into your life and rarely afterwards.
Dry cleaning is thirty seconds with a carbon fibre brush. Hold the brush lightly on the spinning record for two or three rotations, then sweep it off toward the edge. This lifts loose dust before the stylus grinds it into the groove. If you buy one accessory for your records, buy this brush.
Wet cleaning is for the record you just brought home from a shop, an attic, or a house clearance. Decades of cigarette smoke, mould spores, and hardened grime sit in the grooves, and no brush will lift it.
Our wet cleaning routine
- Lay the record on a clean microfibre towel, label facing up.
- Mix your fluid: distilled water with a small amount of isopropyl alcohol and one drop of surfactant. Tap water leaves minerals in the groove, so distilled matters more than any branded fluid.
- Apply with a soft-bristled brush, working in the direction of the groove, never across it. Let the fluid sit for thirty seconds.
- Wipe along the groove with a microfibre cloth, flip, repeat.
- Rinse pass with plain distilled water, then stand the record in a dish rack to air dry fully before it goes anywhere near a sleeve.
The whole process takes about six minutes a record. The difference on a groove-worn Indian pressing from the 1960s can be startling: surface roar drops away and the music steps forward.
The mistakes that cannot be undone
- Never use isopropyl alcohol on 78s. Shellac dissolves in alcohol. Many Indian homes still hold stacks of 78 rpm records, and one enthusiastic cleaning with the wrong fluid will strip the playing surface permanently.
- No household cleaners. Dish soap leaves residue, glass cleaner contains ammonia, and both end up amplified through your speakers forever.
- Never wipe across the grooves. Radial wipes drag grit sideways over the groove walls, which is how fine scratches multiply.
- Do not play a wet record. The stylus will grind slurry into the vinyl. Dry fully, always.
Sleeves are half the battle
A cleaned record returned to a filthy paper sleeve is dirty again in a week. Swap tired inner sleeves for fresh poly-lined ones. At the shop we re-sleeve where needed as part of prep, because a good inner sleeve is the cheapest insurance a record can have.
A clean record is also an honest record: cleaning is what lets us grade accurately, because grime hides both the damage and the shine. If you want to hear what a properly cleaned forty-year-old pressing sounds like, any record in our crates has already been through this exact routine.
