How to Clean Dusty Vinyl Records so You Can Love Your Music Even More
The vinyl trend remains strong for good reason. Some of us aren’t content with tapping a song title on a touch-screen and listening to an over-processed mix through a set of tiny earbuds. With vinyl, we get an actual music experience that we can touch, see, hear, and even feel. But unlike those digital music tracks, vinyl requires the occasional TLC in order to maintain its quality. One of the biggest enemies of vinyl is dust. While there’s no avoiding dusty vinyl, we can certainly contain it.
Why Dust is a Problem for Vinyl
Dust is everywhere and, just a warning, is kind of gross. It’s dead skin cells. It’s carpet fiber. It’s airborne particles that float into our homes from the outdoors. If your vinyl has any exposure to the air whatsoever, it will come into contact with dust.
The problem is that dust doesn’t simply rest on the surface of vinyl. It lodges itself into the grooves and collects in thick clusters. When you go to play your favorite record, your ears are invaded by unpleasant noise as the needle glides over the collected dust. In some cases, the richness of the mix is muffled. In extreme cases, the needle will actually skip due to excess dust contamination.
Dusty vinyl isn’t just bad for the record itself. The dust can collect on the stylus and the needle. Suddenly, your playback quality diminishes for all of your records, even those that are spotless. Over time, the stylus can lose traction, and those records can endure permanent damage as a result of frequent needle jumps. Nobody wants that.
How to Prevent Dusty Vinyl
Prevention is the best cure, so your first step should be to maintain a dust-free environment—as much as that’s even possible. Use a Dust Buster or other portable vacuum to clean the room on a regular basis. If you don’t have tools available, a dust cloth will do the trick. Make sure to also dust your stylus and needle on a regular basis.
You also want to protect your vinyl records with the right sleeves. Big Fudge has a line of master sleeves for both 7” and 12” records. Each one contains premium 3-ply polyethylene and rice paper to prevent dusty vinyl and protect your records for years to come. Always place your vinyl in the sleeve when you’re not using it.
Finally, it’s not enough to have just one sleeve. For total dust protection, you’ll need an inner sleeve and an outer sleeve. Slide the vinyl into the inner sleeve first. Then turn it 90 degrees and slide it into your record’s cover so that none of the record is directly exposed to the air. Then slide the record into the outer sleeve.
How to Clean Dusty Vinyl Records
Despite your best efforts, some degree of dust contamination will happen. When it does, the key is to remove it before it accumulates to an unhealthy level. In addition, don’t ever attempt to play a record that’s covered in dust. This may cause permanent damage.
To clean dusty vinyl, we recommend the Record Pal Vinyl Cleaning Roller. Just place the roller against the edge of your record and give it a good roll to collect all accumulated dust. It’s equipped with a non-adhesive gel that attracts even deep-rooted particles in seconds without leaving any residue behind. Cleaning the roller is easy with a quick rinse, and the quick-drying material ensures that your roller will always be good as new when it’s time for the next dusting.
Use the roller as a preventative cleaning measure every time you plan to put on a record. This will ensure that the record plays to perfection and doesn’t get scratched.
How a Dust-Free Experience Lets Us Enjoy Our Vinyl Even More
Vinyl is the closest thing we have to emulating the live music experience at home. The instruments and vocals have an almost three-dimensional feel, and the warmth of the music playback is both nostalgic and immersive.
In order to get the most from this experience, though, the record needs to be in pristine condition, unencumbered by foreign contaminants. When you place that record on the turntable, you want the freedom to lean back, lose yourself in the music, and forget where you are—if only for a few minutes. It’s just one of the reasons why we can’t get enough of that classic vinyl sound, and a dust-free record makes that possible.
So treat your records well. The experience with which they provide you is one of a kind, and the maintenance is incredibly easy—so long as you’re consistent and diligent about it.
