Hey skip

I'm thinking of buying the KAB EV-1, but its £96 without postage and no doubt the customs charge that I'll get with it

You got any examples of the work it can do please? really tempted to buy this thing, sick of experimenting with crappy so called "awesome" cleaning kits, that dont do much....

Cheers

I haven't really got a better sample as the one I posted already.
Joshua Ryan - Pistolwhip (James Holden Remix).

And I haven't cleaned any records with it in a while (haven't bought much records in need of cleaning). But if you're thinking of cleaning 2800 records with it and digitizing them, I really suggest you get something less laborious to use. The Nitty Gritty machines should be much nicer to use, altho the end result isn't apparently any different. They're quite expensive though.
http://www.nittygrittyinc.com/minipro.htm

Also, cleaning 2800 records will use a lot of the cleaning liquid, so you could consider making your own if you can get hold of basic chemicals easily. I can't remember what exactly you should put into it and what proportions, but I think it was all basic stuff like, isopropanol, distilled water and some detergent (like triton x-100).

Overall I'd say that it's really hard to know if the cleaner will make a difference with the record or not. It really depends on what's wrong with the record. Some records it has salvaged very nicely and on others it has done shit all. If your records are dirty, but not worn out, I'd say you should maybe give it a shot, otherwise I'm not too sure.

Also digitizing 2800 vinyls will take you fucking ages, even if you do nothing else all day. So good luck with that.
You can also remove most pops and clicks digitally by interpolating, silencing and/or copy pasting, but that's way more laborious than cleaning the records. But sometimes there really is no choice (if you want to listen to click and pop free music that is).

___________________

Get Dropbox, with 250 MB extra space!

Get Ronsonal lighter fluid.

quote:

Originally posted by skip I haven't really got a better sample as the one I posted already. Joshua Ryan - Pistolwhip (James Holden Remix).

Ah okay, no worries mate, just thought I'd ask

quote:

And I haven't cleaned any records with it in a while (haven't bought much records in need of cleaning). But if you're thinking of cleaning 2800 records with it and digitizing them, I really suggest you get something less laborious to use. The Nitty Gritty machines should be much nicer to use, altho the end result isn't apparently any different. They're quite expensive though. http://www.nittygrittyinc.com/minipro.htm

Ah okay, sorry to hear you havent bought many vinyls lately, as for cleaning 2800 records with it and digitizing them, I'm selling off a fairly large number of my vinyls and digitizing them as I sell them, so I'd clean as I go, or if I want to specifically pick something to digitize I'll just clean it and then rip. So I'd be quite content with this KAB machine

quote:

Also, cleaning 2800 records will use a lot of the cleaning liquid, so you could consider making your own if you can get hold of basic chemicals easily. I can't remember what exactly you should put into it and what proportions, but I think it was all basic stuff like, isopropanol, distilled water and some detergent (like triton x-100).

Yeah, I know someone that has good fluid for cleaning vinyls and he doesnt charge me much for it, can buy huge bottles of it from him

quote:

Overall I'd say that it's really hard to know if the cleaner will make a difference with the record or not. It really depends on what's wrong with the record. Some records it has salvaged very nicely and on others it has done shit all. If your records are dirty, but not worn out, I'd say you should maybe give it a shot, otherwise I'm not too sure.

Well, I'm not expecting it to perform massive miracles but, I take great care of my vinyls, but dust is such a pain in the arse (my room has a lot of electrical equipment and my PC tower is near my decks, so the dust gets stucked towards the front of the tower near my right hand deck). Its so annoying recording a vinyl to .wav and hearing pops & clicks at the start etc....I dont have any recorsd that are bad enough to skip, due to damage. There are some scratches here and there but in general the condition is fine. So this thing would be of great use to me. How bad was the condition of this Joshua Ryan vinyl when you got it?

quote:

Also digitizing 2800 vinyls will take you fucking ages, even if you do nothing else all day. So good luck with that. You can also remove most pops and clicks digitally by interpolating, silencing and/or copy pasting, but that's way more laborious than cleaning the records. But sometimes there really is no choice (if you want to listen to click and pop free music that is).

haha yeah, won't be doing them all in 1 go of course what i've found is removing the clicks & pops can affect sound quality a great deal, programs like adobe audition and other wave editors sometimes detect normal musical elements (particularly on dance music!) as clicks & pops and removes them, which is a pain in the arse. It's relatively easy reducing the affect of a pop sound on a record (moving the waves towards the inner line on adobe audition) but not during things like the intro.

But yeah, to cut a long story short, I've just ordered this KAB! with an extra bottle of fluid

By the way, when you record, do you amplify the dB levels? in Adobe Audition when I record I use the amplify plugin and it increases the dB's for each channel as high as possible before reaching 0dB (distortion), it works brilliantly and makes the rips sound even better! No distortion and fantastic volume levels. Not sure if you have that option as I know you use a MAC (OS X?)

Cheers

Last edited by Simcut on Dec-09-2009 at 13:06

I've bought vinyls lately, but they've mostly been in mint or near mint condition, so I haven't had much use for the KAB. I did buy a Nagaoka CL-152 rolling cleaner a month or so ago. It gets rid of the visible dust much better than a carbon fiber brush at least, but i don't think it'll take the crap out from deep in the grooves though, like the KAB does. I bought it because i was fed up with my carbon fiber dust not working as I want it to. No matter how I use it, I can't get all visible dust off with it, but with the rolling cleaner it's really easy.

I can't remember exactly in what condition the Joshua Ryan vinyl was when I got it, but I remember that I really wasn't happy with it, but in the end I got it cleaned pretty well. I think I still might have the separate recordings in .wav of the uncleaned vinyl, cleaned with the KAB and the final version where I've removed even the smallest pops and clicks manually by interpolating.

I haven't used any automatic pop/click removal software, so I've never had the problem of pop/click removal affecting the sound, so that it can be noticed when listening. Usually I just interpolate a small section (where the pop/click is) as most times they're clearly visible.

Every time I record a vinyl to my computer I adjust the levels from the sound card so that it's near 0 dB, but far enough, so it won't clip if there are some louder parts I've missed skimming thru the tune quickly. Then after the recording and click/pop removing I normalize the levels to 0 dB, so that the recording is about the same loudness as all my other music. Mostly vinyl recordings will end up a bit quieter though as the peaks on vinyl recordings aren't that even.

___________________

Get Dropbox, with 250 MB extra space!

quote:

Originally posted by jpgrdnr those cleaners are a scam < lighter fluid

This post is FTW.

No need to mess with anything else. Just lighter fluid and an antistatic cloth. Anything else is just overkill.

Cheers
Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

Hey dude

when you use the KAB EV-1 what brush do you use to spread the fluid? Do you just use the brush that came with the machine or something else?

___________________
How can sound exist if there's no one there to hear it?

I use the one that came with it. I've seen no reason to use anything else. I've got quite some shitty vinyls around atm which I should try cleaning (were sold as mint, but were actually far from). Interested in seeing how much I can improve them. But I don't think I'll have the time to do it for a few months at least, so they'll have to wait.

___________________

Get Dropbox, with 250 MB extra space!

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2824854.htm

Saw this last night. I don't see the need for it, but interesting concept.

quote:

Originally posted by jpgrdnr those cleaners are a scam < lighter fluid

+1

___________________
My Soundcloud