Dust Bug

skippy_ps

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
Ok, it's not a real Dust Bug. It's dusty here in the desert and I was having a terrible time with dust build up on the stylus even after RD V treatment and wet brushing records before playing. I know it doesn't make much sense but dust there was.

Got this for $20, "Antistatic Record Cleaning Arm" and it seems to do the trick. It actually has a plug-in wire to hook to tt ground but I haven't bothered with that. It has a little weight that one can slide back and forth on the dust arm thingie to add a little mass to the brush.

Only used it a couple of times but it was picking up some white/gray dust.

Works.

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That's the one I use, and I recommend it too. Works well without attaching its ground wire but might work even better with.
 
Murray. I've got a couple of the older versions of these things but I've never used them. Out of interest, do you play with the dustcover down? Do you use specific brushes on both stylus and record before each side?

I gets pretty dusty at my joint, but abiding with the above practices has been the reason not to bother with a bug. Of course this is only if I clean the record and put it in new inner and outer sleeves.

Just trying to get a sense for how bad dust and static is in a desert vinyl world.
 
Murray. I've got a couple of the older versions of these things but I've never used them. Out of interest, do you play with the dustcover down? Do you use specific brushes on both stylus and record before each side?

I gets pretty dusty at my joint, but abiding with the above practices has been the reason not to bother with a bug. Of course this is only if I clean the record and put it in new inner and outer sleeves.

Just trying to get a sense for how bad dust and static is in a desert vinyl world.
Yes, I keep the dust cover down when playing and I use a brush similar to the Discwasher brush with Phoenix vinyl cleaner before playing. I have one of those little bottles of "stylus cleaner" and I put a drop of that on one of those black plastic brushes that has a little tuft of brushy stuff on the end and use that to clean off the stylus. I look at the stylus with a magnifying glass before use.

I even used the vacuum cleaner on the record brush to make sure I wasn't transferring dust to the records. I keep records in vinyl/paper sleeves and keep them inside the record sleeves.

So, I'm thinking now that the brush will help out with the dust problem. We'll see.

Murray
 
An antistatic mat also helps. If I didn't have that, I might have to use the bug's ground wire.
 
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