Why I Clean New Vinyl Records

When I was a teenager, music was my world. I was on a constant journey of discovery. I’d overhear a conversation in class about a band someone loved, and there it was, something new to check out. That’s how I first learned of Blue Öyster Cult. Walking through the parking lot after school, I heard car stereos blasting music by Billy Squier, ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Around this time, Ozzy had been banned from playing in Boston, and WBCN debuted his new song “Flying High Again”. It was a wonderful time to buy records. The music I heard on the radio eventually made its way into my hands at the record store. I’d rush home and pull the plastic wrap off the jacket. There were secrets about to be revealed by that glossy black surface. I’d put it on the turntable and – 

Wait. Pause right there.  

What did I do?

Yeah. I put it on the turntable. I want to pull my younger self aside and explain that he has no idea where that record has been. Hasn’t he ever heard of safe spinning?  

The sad thing is, I did the same routine for decades. Run home, unwrap, and play. Then play again. And again. And…. I think you get the picture. Unsafe spinning. The horror of it all, right?

Crazy Train

You’re probably thinking, “Rick’s exaggerating for the story’s sake. He’s creating drama where there isn’t any.”

Well, maybe. It’s not like placing a new record on a turntable without cleaning it first spreads diseases.

Or perhaps it’s exactly like that. In this case, the disease isn’t a microscopic virus that replicates and spreads. But it behaves like one. Here, the disease is dirt, oil, and dust, and it replicates by pulling more dirt, hair, lint, and dust to itself by static electricity. This spreads across the surface of your record and attaches to your stylus. From there, it spreads to the next record. And so on until your entire collection is infected.  

Now that was a bit of exaggerated poetic license for the sake of story-telling. But it’s not entirely fiction. 

Dirty Work

My record-buying routine has thankfully changed. I still rush home and unwrap a new record in much the same way. The difference now is that I clean it first before placing it on the turntable, just as I would a newly purchased used record. If you think I’m being too cautious, the next time you buy a new record, look closely at it when you first slide it from its sleeve. You might see things like fingerprints, dust, lint, and maybe hair that’s not your own. That’s exactly what you’d expect to find with a used record. But this came straight from the pressing plant. How can this happen?

A Factory By Any Other Name…

A record-pressing plant is an unsterile environment. It’s a factory. Like any factory, there are different levels of quality control, employee diligence, and filtering systems. Records are round pieces of plastic. Once pulled from the press, they are stacked before making their way to their paper or plastic sleeves. Those sleeves, too, have seen their fair share of environments. It goes from a paper plant to a box and then is shipped across the country. The record itself goes from hand to hand, collects static electricity, dust, and whatever else is floating around in the air, and that’s all carried with it into the sleeve – along with a greasy fingerprint from the last bag of potato chips the employee scarfed down during break.

This story is as old as time. Or at least as long as records have been manufactured. I bought a sealed copy of Piper’s first album last year. What did a find on its surface? A well-preserved, four-decades-old fingerprint. I wonder what that worker is doing now? Hopefully wearing protective gloves if they’re still working for a record pressing plant.  

Anyway, the old me wouldn’t have noticed this. I would have slapped it on the turntable, blissfully oblivious to the fingerprint smear. Now I clean it. Not with a record brush, which basically does nothing when it comes to a greasy fingerprint. I now put it through a wet wash and vacuum dry. I recently added the vacuum dry step to my process and was so impressed by the results that I put every record I owned through it. I won’t lie; it was a pain in the neck, literally, from all that looking down, but in my obsessive mind, it had to be done.   

We Don’t Need No Education

 You can teach an old dog new tricks. It’s better if you learn these tricks as a young dog. I learn something new when it comes to record collecting constantly. It’s why I started this new journey to share what I’ve learned and what I will learn.  

That concludes today’s lesson. What did we learn today? New records are dirty. Your stylus and the sound quality of your listening experience will suffer from it. Stop the disease and noise pollution. Clean your records, even the new ones.