Company Addresses: VPI, P.O. Box 159, Ozone Park, N.Y. 11417.
Nitty Gritty, 4650 Arrow Highway, #F4, Montclair, Cal. 91763.
No cult can be successful without ritual purification, and this is as true of analog-record worship as any other primitive religion. The benefits of purifying records can, however, be more tangible than purifying most other idols. A professionally cleaned record does sound different from one cleaned with a hand-held brush. No combination of brush and fluid alone can properly remove the fine microdust in the bottom of the record groove where the stylus makes contact. This type of cleaning takes a strong vacuum, and very close contact.
Without such a vacuum, many brushes simply remove the larger surface particles, or move the dust around without removing it. This is often true even of the best carbon-fiber brushes and otherwise excellent hand-held cleaners. Hand cleaning is also something of a lottery; it is extremely difficult to use most brushes with just the right stroke to remove as much dust and dirt as possible. The effectiveness of most brushes varies sharply with pressure, and humans lack the built-in pressure sensors of torque wrenches. Brushes are generally not wide enough to cover the entire record when used at the angle where they are most effective.
The problem with professional cleaners, however, has been their price. Few audiophiles are willing to pay more than $500 for a machine to clean their records even if this does mean substantially better highs and upper midrange, far fewer ticks and pops, longer record life, more detailed and stable imaging, a lower noise floor, and better tracking. Even fewer are willing to make regular visits to the few IAST stores which still offer professional record cleaning services.
Enter the Nitty Gritty and VPI record cleaners. Nitty Gritty has a series of machines ranging from the basic Nitty Gritty 1.0, at $239, to the Nitty Gritty Professional, at $639. The basic difference is in finish, vacuum power, manual or power turning of the record over the vacuum, and application of the record cleaning fluid on one or both sides. VPI now has two models, the HW-16 ($355) tested here, and the professional HW-17 ($650). The Nitty Gritty 1.0 is particularly interesting because it is the cheapest unit on the market. It also, however, is the most basic. You must put the record on a spindle, apply the fluid to the top with a brush, turn the record over, and manually rotate it over the vacuum intake. This is not a particularly difficult or time consuming process, but it can be a bit awkward. The record is not supported at the outer edges, you must be careful to saturate the brush before you begin, and you must then apply fluid to the brush with a very light hand to avoid pushing down on the record or having the fluid spill over the label.
In contrast, the VPI has a rotating platter which supports the entire record, and you simply apply the fluid and bring down the lid, which has the vacuum intake built in. This is a simpler process, although it costs more, involves a noisier and larger machine, and means the record grooves do touch the platter of the cleaning machine. I cannot quite bring myself to call the ergonomic trade-offs a "wash," but the advantages of the VPI HW-16 over the Nitty Gritty 1.0 are limited, and the Nitty Gritty 2.5+ has power rotation and an automatic scrubbing arm for $379.
Both machines give excellent results. I compared them by listening to a wide variety of music from records they had cleaned and by using a computer program which compared noise level over time by octave. Both machines yielded massive improvements in noise and musical detail over the best hand brushes I have tested. Both compared well to discs cleaned on a Keith Monks professional record cleaning machine.
I should note that a true believer will notice significant differences in the noise spectra produced by the Nitty Gritty, VPI, and Keith Monks and that the Keith Monks cleans the record more consistently. The differences are not, however, uniform, and they seem to vary with record thickness, shape, and flexibility. They also are very minor. I confirmed this with a simple test.
I would clean a record on one machine, listen, and then clean it on another. None of the three machines made records noticeably noisier, although they did cause slight shifts in the frequency balance of the noise floor. Use of a hand brush did make the record slightly noisier, and all three machines made records cleaned by hand brushes more detailed and musical, as well as improving their noise floors. The real issue is which model you find easiest to operate and most convenient to put in your home at the price you can afford.
If anything, different brands of record cleaning fluid made far more difference than different brands of record cleaning machine. The PS Audio Sonipure, LAST, and Nitty Gritty record cleaning fluids all produced quieter results than any mix of alcohol and distilled water that I could come up with--although a 20% to 33% alcohol solution in distilled water is quite good. I cannot defend my ranking on technical grounds, but I felt the Nitty Gritty Purifier fluid had a distinct edge in terms of sound clarity over the PS Audio and that it outperformed the LAST. Much, however, may depend on the particular contaminants present in your area.
The dust and pollution "fallout" in a city like Washington, D.C. is different from that of New York City or a home in the country.
I also should note that both the Nitty Gritty and VPI record machines, even with no fluid at all, produced better results than any hand-held brush or combination of a hand-held brush and fluid that I tried, provided that the record was cleaned with a fluid every 4 to 8 plays. I don't like using too much of any fluid (other cult priests and priestesses disagree), and I also tend towards occasional moments of inertia.
Dry cleaning is quick and effortless.
Further, professionally cleaned records mean you need to pay much closer attention to the rest of your cleaning process. You can hear the differences much more quickly. Again allowing for differences in cult practices, I recommend that you take the following four steps:
(1) Clean new records with First fluid from Nitty Gritty. Budget, European and jazz records often come with crud in the grooves that ordinary cleaning fluids won't remove. First audibly improves the detail and sound-stage delineation of many records. If it has a drawback, it is that some records don't benefit from such cleaning. You can hear the hiss, miking problems, etc., better after you use First. This, however, is an argument for better records, not against First.
(2) Use the LAST stylus cleaner. While the Discwasher stylus cleaner works reasonably well, and the Signet and Audio-Technica fluids work very well under most conditions, the LAST cleaner consistently removes, the kind of black coating on the stylus that no other cleaner I have tried removes-at least not without extensive effort and repeated checks with a microscope. I also feel far more confident that I can use a minimum of fluid and safely avoid putting a stiff brush to my delicate cantilevers.
(3) Use Stylast stylus treatment. I find that Stylast provides virtually all the sonic benefits of LAST record treatment, at far less cost and with far less difficulty in applying it. These benefits consist of better upper-octave detail and broader, if unpredictable, improvements in tracking and sound stage reproduction.
(4) Use a carbon-fiber record sweep, if your turntable suspension permits it. A Hunt, Garrard, Signet, or Audio-Technica record sweep (a tone arm-like device that cleans the record as it plays directly in front of your stylus) will not clean a record, but it will solve the problem of records attracting dust as they play or are handled, regardless of how they are cleaned. (Unfortunately, the lowest-mass unit--the Garrard--must be imported from the U.K.) Even then, such devices are for high-torque turntables or those with stable suspensions like the SOTA and VPI. Sweeps will degrade the sound of low-torque or delicate-suspension turntables--the Linn and the Pink Triangle, for example.
I know that all this may seem a bit complicated, but it generally takes less than two minutes a record, and believe me, it pays off. If you are a true audiophile (and this can be defined as someone whose records cost more than the total cost of their hi-fi system), you will be amazed at how much better every record will sound and for how much longer you can keep your records--particularly those irreplaceable ones of great performances which are badly made--alive.
Thus endeth today's lesson on ritual purification.
-Anthony H. Cordesman
(Audio magazine, Nov. 1984)
Also see:
Decca Record Brush (ad, Sept. 1976)
Discwasher -- record care (ad, Nov. 1977)
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