I love cleaning my vinyl collection. A clean LP, free of dirt or dust is as pristine as a CD—it has none of the chronic pops and clicks that people have unfortunately associated with listening to vinyl. We’ve all had those instances where a normal cleaning won’t do–where an LP does indeed suffer a dusty calamity where it needs intensive help.
The first thing that comes to my mind in those situations is a good record cleaning machine. For the poor audiophile, I’ve come across budget solutions but never did I think that record cleaning and wood glue would come together in the same sentence until a fellow-audiophile shared this video with me.
Does it work? Is this legit? For some, using wood glue has been a disaster:
I guess wood glue has been around for some time as a method to try, the Record Revirginizer has wood glue in their FAQ. While I can’t speak for the Record Revirginizer, it sure does look like the same concept—just a different chemical mix that they claim is safe for vinyl.
At least one daring user on AudioKarma took the wood glue plunge and posted some impressive-looking photos.
Lifehacker has an article on using wood glue to clean your LPs and 120Studio does too!
Personally speaking, I’m just not sure I’m ready to switch my LP cleaning methodology and I would much rather trust my vinyl cleaning to a VPI HW 16.5 cleaner than good old wood glue. Maybe—just maybe—for the sake of scientific inquiry I’ll dig up an LP to try this out on. I just need to get up enough courage to do that.
