How to Wet Wash a Vinyl Record Without Soaking the Label

In 2022 somebody in r/vinyl posted a photo of their record-cleaning setup: two suction cups, one locked over each label. They'd looked forever for a way to wash a record without getting water on the label, and found them at Harbor Freight, the discount tool shop.

They'd learned the hard way. A junk record from the fifties or sixties went in the sink as a test, and the paper label soaked up the water and was ruined. Labels from the late seventies and eighties, they reckon, are better coated and fare better in the sink.

If you'd rather run a record under the tap than spray it and wipe it, this is the cheap cover collectors keep naming, limits included.

What is a dent puller?

A suction cup dent puller is a car-body tool: a rubber cup about four inches across with two plastic levers on top. Press it onto a dented door panel, flip the levers to lock the suction and pull. Tile setters use the same thing to lift tile and drop it into place.

Over a record it does two jobs. One cup locked over each label seals the paper away from the water. The levers give you a handle on each side, so you never touch the grooves.

Archimago, an audio blogger who wrote the method up in 2016, used a pair of Bondo locking dent pullers. The 2022 poster's came from Harbor Freight. Either way you need two, because one on its own doesn't seal.

Washing records in the sink with dent pullers

The method, as the two posters and Archimago describe it:

Cover both labels and lock the levers together. The 2022 poster's rule is that the cups completely cover the label. Archimago locks both at once for a good seal.
Wet the record and add a little dish soap. The person behind a 2025 thread wets the record under running water, adds a few drops of Dawn and scrubs each side lightly by hand. Archimago mixes three or four drops of mild detergent in about a cup of water.
Work the grooves with something soft. A foundation makeup brush for the 2022 poster, and a small paint pad for a commenter in that thread who clamps the cups on and sprays. Archimago's scrubber is a paint edger, and a reply in the 2025 thread reckons an edger with the softest pad will tackle even the dirtiest discs.
Rinse well. Archimago is liberal with the rinsing to get all the detergent off.
Flip the levers and take the cups off before drying. The handles flip and the cup lets go without a fight. Archimago takes them off first because the release drips water on the record, and not too vigorously, or the record goes with them.
Wipe and rack it. A microfibre cloth, then a dish rack for a couple of hours, until the grooves are dry.

Does a wet label really get ruined?

Sometimes. The 2022 poster's junk record is one case, and The Vinyl Factory's hand-cleaning guide says not to rinse vinyl under a tap, because you risk damaging the label.

Two people have got a label wet and got away with it, though. The person who started a 2018 cleaning thread says a detergent with no alcohol can get the label a little wet, as long as you dry it right away. It's the alcohol that lifts the dye.

Someone else there blasted a seventies label with the kitchen faucet for a minute as a test, and it was fine.

In a 2024 thread asking for a home-made label protector, one reply's advice for anyone spraying was to angle the spray outward and wipe the label rather than buy anything. Another simply keeps the labels dry.

So the cover is for the sink washer, the person who runs water over the whole record, and most of all for old paper labels. If you spray and wipe, keep the spray off the label and skip the cups.

Tap water or distilled?

Owners split on it. The 2022 poster rinses with plain tap water through a faucet filter. Archimago rinses under the tap too, since Vancouver's tap water is good, and sees no reason to pay for a special rinse.

The other side is louder. One reply in the 2022 thread says to keep them out of the sink, because tap water leaves minerals behind. Another says to always use distilled or reverse osmosis water for cleaning and rinsing.

The Vinyl Factory says tap water's impurities re-infect the grooves. In the 2025 thread, someone who'd rather you bought an ultrasonic machine ends their objection on "tap water for a final rinse?!"

The middle path comes from someone who uses tap water on really filthy records and finishes them with a distilled rinse. If your tap water is hard, a distilled final rinse costs a jug from the supermarket.

Digby presses a red-topped suction cup onto the centre of a record lying on a folded towel by the sink. A second cup waits on the counter, and he's smiling.

Is the suction safe on a record?

Nobody knows. No one in these threads reports a cracked record either, but the pushback in the 2025 thread came from somebody who'd used the tool for its day job:

I've used these for work before, this is gonna crack a record at some point, these suction cups are pretty strong and are meant for tile and glass, which is usually thick, unlike vinyl records.
u/Background-Zombie-20, in r/vinyl

The 2022 poster's own line is that they haven't found a record these don't work with.

Archimago's warnings are about hands rather than suction: some dexterity involved, and a fair warning for anyone with butter fingers.

One more open question: a year after the 2022 thread, a commenter's cups wouldn't stick at all, and nobody answered. Try them on a record you wouldn't miss first, the way the 2022 poster did.

Which size fits the label?

A 12-inch record's label is 100 millimetres across, a hair under four inches. The Bondo's cup is four inches by 3M's figure, though Archimago reckons it closer to four and a half.

Long albums, where the run-out groove sits close to the label, need precise placement. The 2022 poster's Harbor Freight cups are four and a half inches and fit within the run-out, with some longer albums coming close.

Singles are out. A 45's label is smaller, and a commenter in the 2022 thread went off to measure up for smaller cups for their 45s.

Is a proper label protector better?

Purpose-made covers exist: two plastic discs that screw together over the label, and the Groovmaster is the one these threads name. One owner has used theirs for about five years and 1,500 records.

Two owners of purpose-made covers report leaks: one has had some leakage, and another's record-specific clamps still leak. The clamps built into one collector's cleaning machine don't cover the whole label, and they call the cups way better.

When a reply pointed out that a product for this already exists, the 2022 poster's answer was a hardware store ten minutes away and a nice handle to hold.

From the same spot as the cover, Digby holds the record under the tap by the levers of two suction cups, one on each side. The front cup covers the label, and water runs off the bare grooves into the sink while he smiles.

Buy two Bondo locking dent pullers, one for each label, and start with the grubbiest record in the crate. Cups on, levers locked together, soap, something soft, a long rinse, cups off, dish rack.

A dry label and a clean side tell you in one record whether the rest of the crate gets the same. Anyone with a cleaning machine or a stack of 45s leaves the cups in the car-repair aisle, and so does anyone the suction question still bothers.