How to clean vinyl records safely at home

Most of what you hear as crackle is dust sitting in the groove, held there by static and by the grease from fingers. It comes off. What doesn't come off is a scratch, so the point of cleaning is partly to remove the dust and mostly to stop the stylus grinding it in.

What's the safe cleaning routine at home?

Brush first, wet clean second, and stop there unless the record is visibly dirty.

The brush, every play. A carbon fibre brush is thousands of fine conductive bristles that both sweep the groove and bleed off static. Rest it on the surface with almost no pressure while the platter turns two or three times, then draw it slowly towards the edge and lift it away. Lifting it straight up puts the dust back where it came from. Clean the brush by pinching the bristles closed and wiping the ridge of dust off with a finger.

The wet clean, when it's needed. Either buy a proper record cleaning fluid, or make one: three parts distilled water to one part isopropyl alcohol, with a single drop of a surfactant such as Ilfotol or Tergitol per 500ml to break the surface tension. Distilled water matters more than the alcohol. Tap water carries dissolved minerals that dry into the groove as a fine scale, which is worse than the dust you set out to remove.

The method:

1. Take the record out of the sleeve and hold it by the edges, or lay it on a clean cloth on a flat surface.
2. Apply fluid to a microfibre cloth rather than pouring it on the record, so nothing runs towards the centre.
3. Wipe in circles, following the groove, working outwards from the label edge to the rim. Never wipe across the grooves.
4. Dry with a second, clean microfibre cloth, the same circular direction.
5. Put it into a fresh polylined or antistatic inner sleeve. Returning a clean record to a shedding paper sleeve wastes the work.

Never wet the label. Paper label stock stains, cockles and lifts, and a water-marked label costs a record a grade when you come to describe it. Keep the cloth a few millimetres clear of the paper, and if you're cleaning a stack of records, get a label protector rather than trusting your aim.

Does the wood glue method work?

It works, genuinely, and it carries real risk. Understand both before you try it.

The method is to pour PVA wood glue over the playing surface, spread it into an even layer with a card, leave it to cure for 12 to 24 hours, then peel the whole sheet off in one piece. The cured glue takes with it debris that's compacted into the bottom of the groove, which no cloth reaches. On a record that's been played with a worn stylus in a smoky room since 1974, the difference can be startling.

The risks are equally real:

• Glue that reaches the label soaks it, and there's no recovering that.
• A layer too thin tears as you peel, leaving fragments in the groove that then need another coat to lift out.
• The wrong glue. It must be plain PVA with no additives, no "fast grab" formulations, no fillers.
• Time. A day of curing per side means a double LP is a four day project.

So it's a last resort, not a routine. If a record is bad enough that you wouldn't otherwise play it, and it isn't valuable enough that you'd rather pay for a professional clean, the glue method is a reasonable gamble. Try it on something you don't mind losing first. For anything rare or hard to replace, use a machine or a cleaning service instead.

Which cleaning machines are worth knowing about?

Three tiers, and the cheapest one does more than people expect.

Manual bath cleaners, around £70 to £90. The Spin-Clean and its imitators are a tank of fluid with two brushes; you turn the record through by hand for a few rotations. They shift surface dirt well, they cost less than five secondhand LPs, and they leave the record damp, so you dry it yourself with microfibre. For most collections this is the sweet spot.

Vacuum machines, roughly £350 to £700. Pro-Ject, Okki Nokki, Nitty Gritty and similar. You apply fluid, brush it in, then a slotted arm vacuums the fluid and the suspended dirt straight back off. Drying is the part that matters: nothing is left to evaporate in the groove. They're loud, because a wet vac is exactly what they are, and they're fast enough to do a crate in an evening.

Ultrasonic, from about £400 for a tank and a rotisserie to several thousand for a Degritter or a Kirmuss. These use cavitation in a 35kHz to 40kHz bath to clean inside the groove without anything touching the surface. The results at the top end are the best available. The price only makes sense for large collections or for people who buy heavily used records.

Below all of that: a good brush, a bottle of fluid and a pack of microfibre cloths, £25 or so, cleans a record properly. Buy the machine when you notice you're avoiding cleaning because it's a chore.

What should you never use?

Anything from under the kitchen sink, anything made of paper, and tap water on a dirty record.

• Household cleaners. Window cleaner, surface spray and anything with ammonia are formulated for glass and worktops. Some strip the surface, most leave a residue you then have to remove.
• Washing up liquid. It leaves a film in the groove that collects dust faster than the dust you removed.
• Tap water on heavy soil. The minerals dry into a fine scale in the groove. Distilled water costs about £1 a litre.
• Paper towels, kitchen roll, tissues. All wood fibre, all abrasive at groove scale, all shed lint.
• Alcohol on shellac 78s. It dissolves them. For 78s, use plain distilled water with a drop of surfactant, and nothing else.
• Anything wet on the label. No exceptions.

One more: don't clean a mouldy record over the rest of the collection. Take it to another room, use disposable cloths, and bin the sleeve.

How often do records need cleaning?

Brush every play. Wet clean a secondhand record once when it arrives, and after that only when you can hear that it needs it.

New records aren't automatically clean. They carry mould release compound from the press and paper dust from the inner sleeve, which is why a brand new pressing sometimes crackles on the first play and settles down after. One wet clean before the first spin deals with it.

Secondhand records are the real workload, and cleaning is worth doing before you grade or describe one, because dirt and damage look identical until the dirt is gone. If you're working out what a copy really is, vinyl record grading explained covers what the standard grades mean.

After that, cleaning frequency follows storage and handling. A record kept in a polylined inner, held by the edges and put away after every play might go years. A record left on the platter under an open window needs attention every month. Most of cleaning is avoided by how you store vinyl records in the first place.

A listening log makes this easier to judge than memory does, because the records worth cleaning properly are the ones you play most. Cratemint logs each spin against the record on your shelf, so the ten records you reach for every week are obvious, and they're the ten worth the fluid and the fifteen minutes.

Cratemint is free on iPhone. Every feature, for everyone.