The AIVS products are excellent, scientifically based, but very expensive (even their purified water is $1/oz!). They share my enthusiasm for enzymatic treatment of heavily soiled records (on which I posted a DIY method previously: http://sites.google.com/site/vincesaudiofiles/). For regular cleaning, all you need is your own detergent stock. For the homemaker, one easy method is to just mix a teaspoon of 100% Triton with a teaspoon of distilled water and work it in slowly to dissolve. Gradually keep adding more teaspoons of distilled water and mixing until a total of 9 teaspoons have been added (roughly a 10% detergent stock). I keep this 10% stock in a used dish soap bottle under the sink (Labelled "Don"
). You want a final concentration of detergent around 0.1 to 0.2% so this 10% stock gets diluted 50 to 100-fold in the final working wash solution. Basically this amounts to a few drops of this 10% stock added to a cup of water (drop size varies tremendously, but absolute detergent concentration really doesn't matter as long as we are in a range where it can be easily removed in subsequent rinsing). The diluted solution is worked into the record with a paint pad or other device, then rinsed off just like if you were using dish soap. A final distilled water rinse is required to remove remaining chemicals and contaminants. For RCMs or as a daily cleaner of previously cleaned albums, this mix can be modified to much lower detergent concentration (500 fold dilution) and addition of isopropanol to 5% final concentration. For super soiled albums, you can use the 10% stock with very little dilution....just rinse well!
