Ultrasonic Method of cleaning vinyl

Review of the Ultrasonic
V8 Cleaning Machine

Greg Marquard

ClevelandVinyl.com
Owner /Audio Archives eBay Powerseller

     I must preface this review by saying I
have used many record cleaning machines over the last decade. I have used the
simplest Record Doctor machine I bought 10 years ago to making my own using my
Dyson home vacuum. 5 years ago, I bought a Nitty Gritty 2.5fi that worked very
well, better than my homemade contraption and certainly better than the Record
Doctor. I sold it after a few months and went to the Nitty Gritty Mini-Pro
double sided cleaner. That one worked as well, but cleaned both sides at once,
so a nice time savings! I then started to experiment with different fluids;
MFSL, the Walker ones, Nitty Gritty, VPI, and Miracle Fluid from Disc
Doctor. What I found is that when I would clean them in a certain order, with 2-3 different fluids, the sound quality
improved. It was about this time that I started looking into the higher end VPI
machines. I bought a VPI 17 and a 16.5 to compare the two and sell the one I
used less. What I found is that they both worked really well, better than ALL
the machines I had used prior. I even borrowed a friend’s Typhoon to see if it
was worth upgrading to that beast. When it came down to it though, I found that
when I modified my 16.5 it worked just as well as the typhoon for a lot less
money! I put a 120 volt Ac fan in the bottom of it and added a speed adjuster
to the platter so I can slow it down to a crawl when vacuuming the record. I
needed the fan as I clean 20-35 records a day so it can get hot!

    After I found the perfect vacuum machine I
then started working on Steam cleaning. Like many audiophiles, I found that
when steam cleaned, records can have much quieter backgrounds, even better than
the best enzyme cleaners without the 10 minute wait on each side of the record!
After warping a few and damaging a few records, I found a good steam cleaning
machine that I used in conjunction with the VPI vacuum machine. I thought that
was vinyl nirvana as my first pressing collection was sounding better and
better. The only problem was the cleaning method was up to 12 steps and 30
minutes per record! That is fine for a hermit, but not for someone with 2 young
children and a business to run. I cleaned the majority of my 10,000 LP
collection I have for sale and for my personal collection this way for about 2
years.

   When I put a truly dirty record into the
Audio Desk, it would come out clean, but I noticed if I cleaned 10 or more of
those in a row, they would come out still having some grime that was visible to
the eye on them. It gets expensive to change the fluid after every 10 records, so
I started pre-cleaning them in my VPI, then sending them to the Audio Desk as a
final cleaning. That was the way to go as the records came out clean and the
fluid could go for about 100 or so records.  

   After 4 weeks of this, I saw that a guy
named David Ratcliff was selling a homemade contraption called the Ultrasonic
V-8. He claimed you could clean 8 at once, both sides in a 10 minute cycle with
results similar or equal to the Audio Desk Ultrasonic machine. Now, THAT got my
attention as I sell 10-20 records a day and would LOVE more free time with the
kids! I contacted David via phone and explained my situation and asked a few
technical questions. David was extremely professional and I quickly realized he
has the golden ears of an audiophile as his system consisted of high end VPI
gear. If he says it works this well and the price is less than HALF ($1495 plus
shipping) of the Audio Desk, I MUST try it!

   I put it together (30 minutes) and filled it
with distilled water and the supplied photoflo used for water sheeting off
purposes. David recommended a small amount of 91% rubbing alcohol or grain
alcohol in the mix also. I ran the machine for 10 minutes to de-gas the water
and ran it though it’s first cleaning cycle. I tried it with 4 records of
varying cleanliness. After 10 minutes, I took them off and let them air dry for
about 25 minutes until bone dry. When I played them, they sounded almost
identical to my 30 minute, 12 step process except now it was 10 minutes and 4
of them were this way! I was impressed. I was even more
impressed when I put 1 or 2 in the machine instead of loading up the spindle
with up to 8. It seems to clean better when just 1 or 2 are put on. After
cleaning about 50 in a day, the water was slightly off color, but I noticed no
difference in sound quality from the first using the cleanest water to the 50^th.
I let the filter work through the night.

   After using the machine for about 6 weeks
now, I have tried various methods of solutions, temperature, ultrasonic speed,
and time to see what cleans the best. I would recommend to eliminate the
photoflo that David recommends, it does help water sheet off the records, but I
don’t know what else it’s adding to the record surface. I would also eliminate
the alcohol used as it can leave traces of noise from the containments (the
other 9% in the 91% bottle). I would instead add a small amount of professional
record cleaning fluid. I use the VPI concentrate with FANTASTIC results. I would recommend the temperature at 50
degree Celsius or more(It goes up to 60 C). The time is up to you as you have
to ask how dirty are your records. I run most through at 10 minutes minimum,
but I also pre-clean them on my VPI vacuum machine. The timer goes for an hour
and it seems it won’t damage the vinyl as I let one record run for 40 minutes
at full blast and still sounded great! I run the ultrasonic speed at low-to-mid
level as it seems to do a better job on the records at this “speed”.

     David has built an amazing machine at a
price that is within reach of most audiophiles. It is an excellent one step
cleaning machine and even better when used with a traditional vacuum machine as
a pre-cleaner. If you would like more info on the machine, go to www.UltrasonicRecords.com

www.ClevelandVinyl.com

Shop my eBay
store for one of the largest first pressing collections of classic rock
records!

VPI HW-19 with
a ClearAudio Talisman goldV2 cartridge

Pioneer Elite
Preamp