Crappy vinyl condition - match a cartridge

I have a great collection of 60s,70s and 80s LPs that has been stroed in heat and humidity over the past 8 years after being demagaed by flooding. The LP condition was very good before the damage, but is not so good now. There is a lot of mold and mildew damage on the LPs and they are noisy as hell now. I clean them with diluted bleach, plain water rinse, followed by disc washer.

Any suggestions as to replacement cartridges for my Ariston and Technics turntables that will help to make the LPs more listenable?

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Originally Posted by redingtonb

I have a great collection of 60s,70s and 80s LPs that has been stroed in heat and humidity over the past 8 years after being demagaed by flooding. The LP condition was very good before the damage, but is not so good now. There is a lot of mold and mildew damage on the LPs and they are noisy as hell now. I clean them with diluted bleach, plain water rinse, followed by disc washer.

Any suggestions as to replacement cartridges for my Ariston and Technics turntables that will help to make the LPs more listenable?

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A cartridge with a conical stylus may be helpful. They ride higher in the groove and produce less noise. Conical styli are usually only on bottom of the line cartridges.
Have you tried washing your vinyl with detergent or tried a RCM? A little scrubbing with a disc washer brush with the detergent might help also. You may need to use more pressure than normal. I would take the chance as the damage is already done.:sad:

I was using a Shure M91ED that was pretty good at keeping the noise low. They can be found used for pretty cheap. Also, had good luck with a Stanton 500 with conical stylus, pretty cheap as well.

Best thing is to just clean them sucker up as much as you can though. Try some of the commercial solutions. They seem a bit expensive, but a little goes a lng way with many of them and when you figure you're saving records that you'd otherwise not listen to, spending 30 bucks or so on some cleaning stuff to bring a few hundred records back from the dad ain't all that expensive.

I haven't had the mold problem you have, but I'm pretty sure there are commercial cleaners that are specialized in getting that type of gunk off. Someone's bound to post one eventually.

Here's one...

http://www.smartdev.com/buggtussel.html

never tried it myself though, so I can't say how well it works, but the reviews look good.

I'll be trying some of that bugtussel cleaner and will report back on how well the stuff works.

I also purchased an AT 1001 conical stylus for the Technics turntable, but it needs some further adjustments because it really sounds bad right now. Not sure what I messed up removing the old cartridge from the P-mount, but it sounds worse than it did with the old Grado MF3.

Is there any alignment template that can be used to check the stylus position on a Technics SL-BD22 turntable with OEM tonearm?

Thanks, John