Anyone still use a Watts Dust Bug?

I found one at a local store a few days ago and am using it now. I had to fabricate a base for it as it was missing. I think I made a pretty good one from a heavy aluminum knob, and a mounting shaft that came out of a dismantled turntable, plus a few minutes with a Dremel.

I've never had one or used one before but what's the feeling on them?

:thumbsdn:

:thmbsp:


Watts Dust Bug by Buhduh, on Flickr

$$$ on ebay.
Watts was the first. I still use the disc preener and stylus cleaner.
had a dust bug for awhile.
I also use my original Vac-O-Rec.
The Dust bug does the job intended to do. Just keep the velvet clean of dust buildup.
the brush too. It's not rocket science, just a useful invention. IMO

I used my Preener for years, until taking it out of its tube made my eyes water from the chemical smell. Something impregnated in the foam must have eventually gone bad, although it was otherwise OK. The Dust Bug? Meh.

Now I just make do with my Discwasher brush...without fluid.

It was good for its day. If the record isn't clamped or weighted, you can hear it "playing" the record and sending the vibrations through the body of the record, but only if you have the gain way up and/or are listening on headphones.

Without constant dampening of the red roller, it does nothing for the static charge on the record and probably creates some, so these days I use an antistatic mat and a dry original Discwasher brush. But I also use a direct Dust Bug descendant with a carbon-fiber brush and a gounding wire. It's sold under many names, most commonly "Antistatic Record Cleaning Arm". I've seen two kinds of packaging:


This manages to pick up a lot of dust the Discwasher misses.

It's too bad that people mounted those things in the damnedest places, not knowing that the suction cups would turn to stone fifty years later.



It took several hours to get this one off.

Thorens 124 ?

Yes.

Sucks about that suction cup, but no suction cup on mine, it's just the weight of the base I made from the knob that supports it.

For my clean records I use a Decca carbon brush. For a new used record I have not washed yet, I'll use a Discwasher wet or sometimes dry. I don't really plan to use this all the time but it's still kind of cool to have.

HI,
I used one for many years until the Discwasher came along. I thought it did a good job. In case you don't know, it was supplied with a small vial of liquid that was supposed to be bushed over the pile before every play.

Sparky

Yes, one of the previous owners of my Dual 1219 used one with the suction cup somewhere down the line. There was the distinctive circular mark on the upper left corner of the table. I managed to polish most of it out, only a trace left now.

Montycat said:

Sucks about that suction cup, but no suction cup on mine, it's just the weight of the base I made from the knob that supports it.

Click to expand...

I know, yours actually looks like a better design. I was just commenting on the state of those original fifty year old gizmos in 2012.

I used the Dust-Bug until the Bib Groove-Kleen came out. Still have the Dust-Bug, and there is a seller on eBay selling NOS Groove-Kleen units.

I use the Dust-Bug on occassion but my Nitty Gritty does the bulk of the cleaning

I use a Groove-Kleen on every Play...And, even after giving a LP a Nice Buffing with a Cloth, the 'Bug' will still Come Up with some Fluff....

I use the Audio-Technica AT-6002 "Dust-Bug type" cleaner. Covers all the bases: carbon fiber brush that gets deep in the grooves, Static is taken care of via the brush and metal arm tube, conductive post and grounded base, and a plush velvet pad that has a humid resivior of cleaning fluid for surface dust.

The carbon-fiber brush doesn't audibly "play" the disc like the Dust-Bug's nylon one, and it always gets some crud off, even from a newely cleaned disc. I've been using various samples of this "arm" since the late 1970's. I'm very happy with it.

I bought mine in 1977 (I think), when I was a hi-fi salesman at Jafco. It had a tubular aluminum arm that I painted semi-flat black to match my ADC carbon tonearm on my Kenwood KD500.

I use it to this day and it works great. It is almost useless on my pristine records. I say that because at the end of play it comes up clean. But sometimes it comes up VERY dirty, even after using my discwasher or my audioquest carbon brush.

Never use the "suction" on the suction base, always just let it sit there loose. Never had a problem with the arm taking the base with it, even on several different turntables.

I like these things, but getting the right one is key. Years ago I had seen the Watts Dust Bug on a friends TT and set out to get one for myself. What I wound up with a was a far-superior piece from Audio Technica. Sorry but this is the best pic I could find of one:



Just like the Watts piece, the AT did a very nice job of dealing with the dust that wound up on the record while it was playing, but it ate up the static, too; that was selling point for me. It isn't shown in that pic, but a grounding wire attached to one of the small set screws you can just about see in the base, and that was the selling point for me. Additionally, it was made from some sexy aluminum and just wasn't as flimsy overall as the Watts. It worked wonderfully for an astounding length of time. How I lost this piece after 35 years in my last move is anybody's guess, but I did and haven't been able to snag a replacement yet.

I eventually caved in and purchased that German anti-static arm shown in a preceding post, which does its job quite well, as far as the static is concerned, but it doesn't do anything at all for the errant dust that finds its way on the surface during playback. It's somewhat difficult to get the balance just right, it tracks too fast most of the time and, frankly, it's kind of "spindly". Clearly, I wanted a better, more durable solution that was more in line with what I had in the past.

Having seen one mentioned in some thread on this forum, I purchased a Bib Groove Kleen NOS on U-No-Wut-Bay and took a gamble on it. While it is clearly set up/designed to deal with the dust issue, it has no ground wire for dealing with static. Upon closer inspection, however, I noticed that the German anti-static base and the Bib base looked remarkably similar....

Here's a tip: The Bib material is, as it happens, very conductive. While the bases are similar and not identical, the Bib support post will fit just fine into the German piece's base (which in my case was already adhered to my TT). It turns out that if you use the German base with the ground wire, along with the rest of the Bib hardware (support post and mechanism), you've got your dust and static problems on the run. True, you have to have purchased both to do this and the Bib brush is sable and not sexy CF, but it works. If you've got more time and patience (and probably sense) than I do, you could always attach a ground wire to the Bib base and get where you need to be.

I thought it turned out to be a pretty nifty solution. Of course, now that I've done all of this, someone is going to suddenly discover a long-lost case chock full of NOS Audio-Technica Dust Bugs and post them on e-bay for $50.00 a piece.

Michael LK48 said:

I like these things, but getting the right one is key. Years ago I had seen the Watts Dust Bug on a friends TT and set out to get one for myself. What I wound up with a was a far-superior piece from Audio Technica. Sorry but this is the best pic I could find of one:

Click to expand...

That's the one I have. Love it. Painted the arm black to match the carbon tonearm I use.