Nitty Gritty Record Cleaning Machine

One of the great things about vinyl records (besides buying a great album for $1 at a garage sale) is that the more effort you put into playing them the more you are rewarded.  You can buy a $50 dollar CD player or you can buy a $500 CD player – but that $500 machine will not sound 10 times better.  With vinyl every dollar you invest is rewarded.

This past year I finally purchased a record cleaning machine. There are lots of options out there – but they follow a pretty basic pattern: fluid, a brush and a vacuum. There are more elaborate options and there are cheaper options, but from my perspective the Nitty Gritty represents the best overall value.  I bought the low-end Nitty Gritty from the Needle Doctor The Nitty Gritty 1.0 ($400).   You can spend more on Nitty Gritty products ($1200 if you please), but all you are buying is some ease of use.  The 1.0 is manual – and hey if you are cleaning a record don’t you want to be engaged in the process anyway?  If I was to do it over I would have bought the next product up – but that would only be cause of the esthetics of a wood case vs. black vinyl.

There are several competitors out there that work on the same basic principle, but what I like about the Nitty Gritty is that the vacuum is on the underside leveraging gravity.

I am a crate digger and so many of the records I buy are pretty damn grungy.  With the Nitty Gritty I can take a $1 investment and turn it into a $5 record – tell me another component in your stereo that can literally create value?

Are there better options on the market?  Are thee more state of the art solutions?  You bet, but I am Axl the humble audiophile and I believe the The Nitty Gritty 1.0 is the vest value out there for the serious vinyl junkie.