How to Clean Thrift-Store Vinyl Without a Machine
A crate of dollar-bin records, crackle in every groove, no cleaning machine. Collectors have a cheap fix from another aisle, and say who should skip it.
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In r/vinyl, back in 2016, somebody took the plunge on an old, noisy Bach double album from a thrift store. They sprayed one side with a homemade cleaner, ran a painter's tool round the grooves, rinsed it, wiped it and left it in a dish rack overnight. The next day it sounded strong and clear and had lost most of its noise.
The tool was a paint edger. A week later they'd done a few more bargain classical records and came back with the honest version. The unscratched parts sound fantastic after cleaning, but the scratched parts still sound scratched.
Ten years on, the same answer keeps turning up when somebody asks. If you've got a crate of grimy second-hand records and no cleaning machine, this is the cheapest method the hobby keeps coming back to, limits attached.
What is a paint edger?
Three separate threads asked exactly that. A paint edger is a flat pad of short, fine bristles on a plastic backing with a handle. Painters use it to lay a clean edge of paint where a wall meets the ceiling. The pad's job there is even coverage, which is why it cleans a groove so well.
When anyone names a make, it's the Shur-Line paint edger. A dollar-store version did the job for one collector who's done hundreds of records that way. In 2010 a poster on the Polk Audio forum said you can feel it "tracking the grooves, like a train on the tracks".
What goes in the spray bottle
Two bottles. The first is the cleaner: distilled water, a few drops of dish soap and often a share of strong rubbing alcohol. The 2016 recipe was three parts distilled water to one part 91 percent alcohol with several drops of Dawn. The person behind a 2026 thread that drew over a thousand votes uses about the same ratio with eight drops of soap. The second bottle is plain distilled water, for the rinse.
All but one of the recipes in these threads use distilled water, and one reply puts it as distilled water only, whatever else you're doing. A couple of people add a drop of dishwasher rinse aid so the water sheets off.
The alcohol is the argued part. One 2021 reply says rubbing alcohol can damage the vinyl, but the person it was aimed at has used it for about thirty years on the same albums. A collector with a machine that cost more than their turntable calls the isopropyl debatable.
You can leave it out. In the 2021 thread, a collector mixes nothing but distilled water and clear Dawn and says it's made thrift store records sound like new. Archimago, an audio blogger who wrote the method up in 2016, uses three or four drops of mild detergent in about a cup of water and no alcohol at all.
How to clean a record by hand with it
- Spray one side, and keep the spray off the label. The 2016 poster's label got a little wet and nothing happened to it, but that was a bargain record.
- Work the pad round the grooves, following the spiral rather than wiping across it. Archimago wets the bristles first to soften them and goes round clockwise and counterclockwise. A few passes is the usual number.
- Rinse with the second bottle of plain distilled water.
- Wipe and stand it to dry. A microfibre cloth takes the water off. The 2016 poster used a car-detailing one. Then the dish rack: overnight for them, three hours for the collector with hundreds behind them, a couple of hours for Archimago.
- Rinse the pad when you're done, and swap it when it looks tired. The dollar-store ones tell you when they need replacing.
The person who asked in 2021 whether there's truly a cheap, DIY way to clean records reckoned a pad on its own would only push the dirt around. The reply they got was the order above: spray, pad, wipe. The liquid loosens the dirt and the cloth carries it off, with the pad doing the work in between.
Loose dust is a different job from grime, and a wet clean doesn't stop it settling again. Several people in these threads brush before play. A few puff it off first with the rubber squeeze bulb photographers use on camera lenses. One of them says it's good for surface bits and no use for anything in the groove.
Can you clean records with a paint edger?
People have been doing it for a decade, and nobody in these threads reports scratching one. The reason they give is the bristles: very soft in one reply, like a soft toothbrush and probably nylon in another. Archimago says the same, that the bristles are soft and not going to scratch an LP.
The hobby's own caution came early, in the first thread:
Paint pads are fine for dollar bin finds and thrift store records, stuff that's already scratched. The problem is that the paint pads vary widely in quality and some that appear soft can scratch records. They can also shed fibers that get embedded in the grooves.
A commenter whose account is since deleted, in r/vinyl
The shedding comes up elsewhere. The 2010 Polk poster's pad drops a hair or two, wiped away with the drying towel. In the big 2026 thread, one reply wasn't sure what the pad is made of and does that step with a cheap velvet brush instead.
So the record to try it on is one you wouldn't mind losing. A grimy dollar-bin find has nothing to lose. A valuable or near-mint pressing does, and for those the hobby's answer is a machine, below.
Will cleaning fix a scratched record?
No. What comes off is dirt, and what's gouged in stays, which is what the 2016 poster's update found. A 2026 reply says the method works on any record, but if they're scratched up under the funk, you're out of luck.
Are record cleaning machines worth it?
The hobby's purists say yes, in the same threads. In 2016 the Bach poster was told you get what you pay for, and that a vacuum-based machine is much better. Another reply that year had built their own ultrasonic cleaner, a bath of vibrating water, and found a very big difference. By 2026 one reply calls hand cleaning of any kind a disservice next to a cheap ultrasonic.
The people who own a machine haven't thrown the pad away, though. One collector with an ultrasonic still scrubs the filthy ones first with the edger. Before the machine, their routine was the edger, a distilled rinse and a shop-vac nozzle wrapped in a microfibre cloth to suck up the water.
The person behind the thousand-vote thread finds an ultrasonic doesn't remove fingerprints, so they scrub anyway.
Pick the worst record in the crate and do that one first: spray it, work the edger round the grooves, rinse it, rack it. Then play it. A record that was only dirty tells you in the first minute, and the rest of the crate can follow it.
