Cleaning of vinyl

There is a need to have old records restored. There are two of us in the group POCM (Preserve Our Corps Memories) who have developed extraordinary skills. Give us your record and we will squeeze every last bit of phonic quality out of the vinyl.

Cleaning the vinyl

First we use equipment from Nitty Gritty. This piece of hardware has been recommended by the United States Library of Congress as an excellent item for cleaning "ickys" from a record. In fact, if you read their web site carefully, you will find that even a new record might benefit from a pass through this marvelous product. ("Oh, Sop, ye jest do ye not?")

This cleansing process removes dirt. jam, dried beer, etc. but not physical damage to the vinyl. This type of damage is dealt with another way.

Skips

We turn to the bane of restorers, the skip. Skips can be painstakingly overcome. I have seen statements on other web sites that say that when there is a skip, this is musical information lost forever. Wellll ..... maybe and maybe not. The process of removing a skip in itself can take hours stretching over several days.

To remove a skip requires understanding what causes a skip.

What is a skip? A skip is caused by something sharp scratching the record. So what does a scratch look like up close? Imagine in your mind's eye the day after a snow storm. You have shoveled out your driveway so it gives a clear drive to the street. Along comes a snow plow and it leaves a ridge blocking your driveway's access to the road. Transpose this mental picture onto a record and you see what causes a skip. It is a ridge of vinyl that blocks the normal path of the needle.

What if you could get rid of the ridge? This is what is attempted with a magnifying glass, a needle, and an immense amount of concentration. This physically alters the record and we would contact you before we did anything like this to your vinyl.

There is also the time honored way of placing a weight on the cartridge to barrel through the ridge that causes the skip. This may give an electronic file with which to make a CD but will injure the record at that spot. Also, the sound from this process may not be high quality. We would contact you first before doing any such thing. We can use a modified "put the weight on the cartridge" approach that results in a much better sound but still damages the record. We would get permission first.

Cleaning the resultant recorded file

From this recording, a .wav file is created. It is important that at no point is the phonic quality lost by electronic compression. For example, an mp3 file at 192 bits/sec is considered true CD quality and a .wav file contains more phonic data than that!

This file is then turned over to the software expert. Any left over imperfections will be removed. The details of this are probably not as exciting as the tail of the skip removal technique but I assure you it is not magic. It also is not simply having high powered software to do the trick. One must know music and in this case, one must know drum corps music as a snare hitting the drum can be interpreted by software to be a click to be removed. A drum major clapping his hands may also be interpreted as a noise to be removed. Drummers hitting their sticks together definitely can sound like a click to be removed.

All along in this process there are limits as to what can be done depending on how much damage has been done to the original vinyl. An imperfection is a challenge to be met and conquered. Sadly, not all imperfections can be conquered.

Rest assured that this is a labor of love for both experts. The joy is in the result.