Affordability
Everyone can restore and enjoy their record collections, which inevitably require maintenance.
When playing records, dust particles and contaminants build up on the stylus, dulling the sound.
If a release agent hasn’t been removed, any dust particles in the grooves may become micro-welded into the release agent by the heat of the needle generated by friction, resulting in more pops and added surface noise. Even new pressings are subject to the same conditions as older, used records.
As to record health: Even new and latest pressings are subject to the same conditions as your old collection.
Release agents are found on the record as a residue from the pressing process and must be removed prior to playback, otherwise they become a magnet for dust and other airborne contaminants. The Shure Brothers in the 70's called this a "pressing oil", long forgotten. Heat generated by the contact of the stylus lodges into the grooves micro-dust particles, which with the release agents are micro-welded into the grooves.
The release agents themselves aren’t sprays applied to the pressing machine’s surface or stampers. Rather, they’re stabilizers and liquefiers added into the PVC mix that when heated form a type of silicic acid. During the pressing process, the release agent then bubbles up to the record’s extremities and surface which helps release it from the stampers. To retain and restore a record’s breath and magic, we recommend removing this residue before a new record is played. Records are pressed in less than pristine areas and in cases where records are played before packaging, the Kirmuss process also removes dust hot-welded into the grooves at the pressing plant.
If you do not have one of our systems, to remove a record’s dust and static prior to play we recommend alwaysa 10 micron parastatic felt brush to remove dust followed by using an aluminum-cased, 2.5-million bristle carbon fiber brush to remove static before every play. (Our KA-B1). Also use a non alcohol-based liquid needle cleaner to remove dust and static collected by the needle (Our KA-N-1).
Keep restored records in our HDPE (non-PVC) 4-mil anti-static, anti-fungal sleeves and store vertically.
Competing cleaning methods will not restore records to like-new condition, but with groove restoration, we now find the dyne of the needle making better contact with detail pressed in the record's the grooves, and our removal of release agents also means that light surface scratches are no longer an issue. Seven or eight times out of 10, our system makes inaudible a “skid mark” from a tone arm that crossed the surface of a record, for the aforementioned reasons. Once every two or three years, process the record with a five-minute cycle, as regular handling might leave fingerprint oils on the record’s edges and surfaces.
Our process might make records look worse, because some sellers hide scratches using now-removed substances like WD40, car wax, and lighter fluid. Not knowing the record’s provenance, in some cases our process won’t remove all the pops and crackles, but will generally reduce previously described undesirable effects, resulting in listenable and enjoyable records and increasing the signal level over floor.
On new pressings we provide 1.3 dB gain, and with vintage records upwards of 3 to 4 dB gain over floor depending on their provenance and 20-30% more frequency response, spectrum, tone, resonance and harmonics, details of the stamper now discovered!