Get rid of POPS and CLICKS on VINYL RECORDS (w/ The DEGRITTER)

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The two things that drew me to vinyl were the expense and inconvenience

This video made me love digital audio even more. I enjoy the occasional vinyl purchase for nostalgia purposes, but CDs and streaming are SO convenient and help keep my audio (and financial) anxiety levels down.

I’ve had the Pro-Ject VCS for a few years now and clean about 10 records per week on it. The whole process takes no more than 2 minutes and works great. Not sure why it’s taking you 15 minutes to clean a record on it. Aside from the motor getting louder, no problems.

A couple things: 1) The foam you see on the records being cleaned in the Degritter is abnormal. The Degritter with its own fluid and distilled water will produce zero foam. What causes foam is when the record you're cleaning was previously cleaned using some other method and some other cleaning fluid containing detergent, which left residue on the record. The Degritter's ultrasonic cavitation loosens that residue from the record and it mixes with the water in the Degritter's tank and gets foamy. This won't hurt anything, as long as the amount of foam is not more than what you see in Darko's video here. 2) Drying time is a bit less in the Degritter than Darko's video shows. He is correct when he says you can dry your records quicker with the fan on high, which is a bit noisier, or you can have the fan on low, which is much less noisy but takes longer. In either case, my drying time is about 1 minute less than his, as shown in this video. 3) His complaints about the Pro-Ject VCS are a bit unfair and need some context. First, what he says is inconvenient applies to all wet-vac style cleaning machines, like Okki Nokki and VPI and similar. Wtih any of them, you have to stand there and operate the machine yourself. You squirt the cleaning fluid on the record, spread it evenly around the record surface and brush it into the grooves, let it sit for a minute, then turn on the vacuum and dry it off. It's not just the VCS, it's all these kinds of machines, most of which cost more than the VCS without doing a better job. Also, what I've described here takes just 3-4 minutes per record, not 5-6 as he says. Lastly, he disses the looks of the VCS machine, but he must be talking about the original VCS which I owned and which was very utilitarian. Two years ago, it was replaced by two new versions, the full-sized VCS2 and the compact VCE, both of which are made of aluminum and look almost like the material of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro. Also, these aluminum versions are much lighter than the original. I have a Degritter and a VCS2, I love both and use both, though I use the Degritter more because it's extremely easy and much less noisy. He's right - you just put the record in the slot, push a button, and you can walk away and do something else, and 5 minutes later you'll have clean, dry record. The VCS (and similar wet-vac machines like the Okki and VPI) do a great job cleaning, and they're 1/4 to 1/2 the price of the Degritter. I recommend them highly. But they are manual machines, much less convenient, and much louder. Because the Degritter is sooo easy to use, I clean lots more records, usually 50 per week, than I ever did using the VCS. Also, for some records, the Degritter makes them sound better than the wet-vac machines, because of the ultrasonic cavitation that Darko described. For some records, there isn't a discernible difference in SQ between the two machines, but for at least of 1/3 of my records, the Degritter makes them sound better, and for a few of them, MUCH MUCH better. Like, the equivalent of getting a cart upgrade or amp upgrade. It's kind of amazing. Expensive? Hell yes. For many, it wont make sense to get a Degritter when you could get a VCE for $500 or so, and that's a very reasonable choice. But if you can afford a Degritter and you have a large (say, over 600) collection, you will be so happy to have it. I have about 1000 records, Discogs estimates my collection as being worth $40K and $60K. (I'm an older dude and have been collecting for years.) Relative to that, the Degritter at $3000 is a very reasonable investment for keeping my records clean and sounding great.

I've owned a Degritter for 9 months. I agree and disagree with Mr. Darko's review. I agree with him that it's super easy and satisfying to clean records with this machine. Like him, I clean far more records per month than I ever did with my Project VCS, which was my sole cleaning machine for 3 years, due to the one-button ease of use of the Degritter, whereas the ProJect and most other wet-vac style cleaning machines require you to stand there and operate the machine. For one record, no big deal. But for 12 records, it's an hour of manual labor on the wet-vac machine, but almost trivially easy on the Degritter. I somewhat disagree with Mr. Darko about the results. About half of my records sound about as good when cleaned with the Degritter as they would if using the wet-vac machines. The rest sound better, a few of which sound drastically better. I respect Mr. Darko as a reviewer. He knows his stuff, and he doesn't b.s. Some of his reviews have helped inform my purchase decisions. But almost every other review of the Degritter I've seen, including many by equally respectable reviewers, absolutely RAVE about the results compared with cheaper cleaning methods, including wet-vac machines like the Project, Okki Nokki, VPI, and the like.  Also, Degritter customer support is next-level excellent, despite being a small company in northern Europe.   If you can't or don't want to pay US$3000 for a Degritter, by all means don't buy it. But if you've never used one, maybe refrain from mocking the device, because it suggests that people like me who've bought one are dumb rich people wasting their money on snake oil. I'm a teacher, not rich at all, and I did a ton of research and made an informed purchase decision that I'm happy with.

Here in the UK the Degritter is £2500 and the Project vc-e is £330 - whilst the former might do a better job and is more convenient i'am very happy with the cleaning performance of the Project - if you have a budget of £2500 I would buy the Project and use the remaining £2170 to upgrade your system or buy more records!

My reality is I aint getting any younger, and I've had a bunch of vinyl from the '60s and up sitting around for quite some time being neglected. After a few years of retirement, interrupted by the wife working from home for two of them, I figured it would be good to do something with my really old albums and some of the newer ones that I accumulated but never had the time to get around to before (mostly from before vinyl became a fad again, just to give a time-frame), in the peace and quiet I've been granted a few days a week for the last few months now. My last turntable (from the '90s) and cartridge (from '05) combo didn't really do it for me (not loud enough, mushy sounding), so made some upgrades to them recently, and threw in a separate preamp for good measure. Then given how I seem to have picked out some of the noisier vinyl to listen to first, a few weeks ago got the degritter (the convenience factor being key as was the ultrasonic technology). It's helped a lot, though vinyl is vinyl, so it is what it is, but it's sounding better with the upgrades so I'm happy enough, I suppose (adjusting the tonearm height might just have helped some with the vinyl noise too). Found some quieter albums since then so that's helped make me happy too. At some point, may add the old ('90s) nitty gritty into the mix to see if it makes any difference with some of the noisier records. I don't really plan to do much in the way of accumulating any more vinyl, but what I do have I want to enjoy it to its fullest... and in particular before the wife comes back home to work (I imagine she will at least a couple days) and/or retires altogether, so indeed now is the time -- I really prefer listing in a quiet and uninterrupted manner, something that does not exist while she is home, plus her work and my music cannot co-exist unless headphones are involved. (Also looking forward to getting my repaired/refurbished ('80s) cassette deck back in a few months, it saw some use before covid and was working fine on most tapes, but it's door mechanism broke early this year… not looking forward to paying what that's also gonna cost me though.)

I remember an interview years ago with George Harrison discussing the difference between cd's which were taking over the music technology and good old vinyl. He said he missed the hissing and cracking and popping of vinyl. That sound just brings back memories....

Great video! The picture disk obviously has been stored and sitting for years in a PVC sleeve without any protection against degassing. PVC sleeves (crystal clear jacket protective outer sleeves) let loose their plasticisers over the years causing the dull record surface. As far as I know, there is no cure, the record is ruined. Now what I found out from my stored records that had those PVC outer sleeves and were stored having only their original paper inner sleeves, is that most, if not all, were more or less affected by those migrating plasticisers. However, those that were stored in lined inner sleeves never were affected at all. Apparantly, those gasses are not able to penetrate the plastics used for lined sleeves, no matter what kind of plastics the inner sleeves had. The process takes years depending on the conditions such as temperatures and humidity levels. Unfortunately, the process is irreversible and any record affected must be considered a write off. Fortunately there are many alternatives to protect the outer sleeves. Greetings from Hekelingen, The Netherlands. Willem.

I have a Degritter. I have around 2000 records and have, over the past few years, progressed from a Disco Anti-Stat to 2 Disco Anti-Stats (one for a rinse cycle) to a Watson’s vacuum RCM. The Degritter is relatively expensive but it does a brilliant job and is so easy to use. I’ve cleaned over 300 records since I got the Degritter under 2 months ago. I no longer consider it a chore so I no longer have a backlog of records waiting to be cleaned.

I researched the DeGritter, VPI, Pro-Ject, Record Doctor, Spin Clean brand record cleaner machines. I couldn’t afford the DeGritter, the others were with in reach however. I studied the process of each one, build quality ect. I chose the Spun Clean Mk ll. It was delivered yesterday, I cleaned 20 of my Jazz and Blued albums last night. I’m quite happy with the results. I could see and hear a very notable difference! 50 years ago I used a Discwasher brand vinyl disc cleaner, it did quite well for cleaning and anti static removal. Times change and I gad been cleaning the discs in my kitchen sink with a mild mix of dish soap and isopropyl alcohol, and hand dry. This worked decently but I saw room for improvement, so I bit the bullet! Good video John keep up the good work!

I’ve had that Orb record since release…that’s why you must get records out of PVC sleeves. That is the result/residue left from years of PVC and vinyl contact.

Hello John, sorry I'm a bit late to the party with this video. I've had a Degritter for about a year now and I've found it very, very effective. However I would say that with a second hand record, from the 60's 70's 80's or 90's one clean isn't enough, one cycle is fine for a new or nearly album, but a record that's accumulated dust and particles over decades and perhaps tens if not maybe a hundred plays. I've found that 3 or 4 cycles on heavy is absolute minimum and then I would add a cycle for every decade (one extra for 80's two for 70's etc...) You will gradually here the noise floor disappear. I absolutely love mine, it works. I've found a surfactant and isopropyl alcohol work better than the Degritter solution too. Something worth experimenting with. Yes it is expensive I think I paid about £2500 for mine, but as you noted if you have £5000 turntable, £3500 arm and an Ortofon Cadenza Black cart, it's very much worth considering as part of your system.

I have one, love it! Very easy to use and works great.

Great video! Love your content 😃

I bought a SugarCube and never looked back. What an amazing technology. I tested it on my oldest, cheap records that I could care less about. They were noisy and sound awful. I cleaned them with my Pro-ject and recorded the cleaned up record. Yes the SugarCube does that too. Wow, wow, what an amazing product! The only down side? It cost me $3,500. If only an big company by Sony would buy this company and use their massive manufacturing power to drive the price down. It is possible. Remember, they did this with Dolby and dbx. I am enjoying records again. Thank you Sugarcube!

I just started my vinyl journey, i own a huge collection of cd players and a sacd player, watching this makes me chuckle bout the whole vinyl experience, i love how vinyl enthusiasts say that cds sound terrible and i think that maybe they didnt try various cd players to find the sound that they like, i on the other hand have found that vinyl also has recordings and printings that sound awful. I do love the romanticism of the vinyl though and good recordings sound awesome and a bit "warmer" than cd. I enjoy both but i much prefer the cd as a medium of enjoyment still i guess.

Excellent review mate as always, cheers from Mexico City!

This was the best video of the Degritter that I have seen.