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We moved house, again, last month. Hopefully for the last time as we're now "proud" home-owners… which also means we're skint, staring down the barrel of a never ending list of DIY jobs, and all our boxes are out of storage. Including my Vinyl.
It's been a long time since I've had my Vinyl out. They've been in storage for at least 6 years, and it's closer to 10 since I regularly mixed with them. To make it up to them, I decided to show them the love; I'm going to replace any knackered inners, get some proper plastic outer sleeves, and give them all a damn good clean.
Record cleaners are crazy money. There's no way I'm going to spend 600 nicker on a washing machine for my vinyl, but I do want mine to have an *actual* wash. Some of them spent half of the 90s (and all the naughties) spinning under a cloud of pot smoke, and none of them have had more than a cursory look at an anti-static brush in well over a decade. In comparison, the Spincare seems almost too good to be true: a proper little record bath, albeit one you need to work manually, for 50 earth pounds! Anyway, I took a punt.
I bought mine off eBay. It arrived in a couple of days and was well packaged, in a small box containing everything you need: bath, cleaning liquid and micro-fibre cloth. The unit's a well-designed black-box that comes apart to reveal the bath, drying rack, and outer lid. The rack stands 10 vinyl, and the bath holds enough liquid to clean ~50 per-sitting.
On Saturday, I rolled up my sleeves and pulled out my white-labels as these have had the hardest life, kicking about in paper inners, half or which are torn. They're dirty and (occasionally) scuffed from use. If anything can give the Spincare a test, it's these boys.
Operation's handraulic. You stick the vinyl between two felt cleaning pads, rotate it clockwise three times, then anti-clockwise another three. Pull it out, give it a shake (ffnar) and leave it on the rack to dry. By the time I'd done 10 (and filled the rack) I was able to go back, give the first a quick wipe-down, put it in a new anti-static inner and a proper cardboard sleeve and crack on with the next.
Is it worth 50 quid? Well, the results are *impressive*. I'm genuinely blown away at how good. Bar the serious skuffs, the cleaned records look brand new. The noise floor is reduced and the crackles are quieter. Most of them sounded as good as I'd ever heard them.
It's not a miracle worker. You're not getting rid of any gouges with this. But looking at the cloth (and water) after I'd done 25 records, yeah, you really are getting a LOT of gunk out of them.
In my humble opinion this is an absolute steal for 50 quid. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
Now all I need to do is remember how to mix with vinyl...
