You know that awful moment when you’ve just bought a really rare record at the flea market, see no scratches but loads of dust and fingerprints on it. Oh, you don’t want to put your needle on that one, when you return home. But how to get rid of that soil? Some people use record washing machines, some use wood glue to pull out the dust in the grooves. In this video, YouTube user SupraWes explains his almost perfect DIY cleaning process for soiled vinyl records using a turntable, washing fluid, a vacuum cleaner, microfiber towels and a drying rack. What’s your favourite way to clean your records like a sir?

Click Play to watch! The main cleaning process starts at 8:00

Cannot see the video? Watch directly on YouTube

Another more common and established way to clean your records is by using something like the Knosti Disco Antistat record washer. You can order these packages in Germany since 1978! With this set you get everything you need, to wash and dry your records in an easygoing way.

You can order it directly through AMAZON to get rid of the dust on your records.
Save your needle, save your sound – get rid of the dusty grooves!

Now we get funky with the room by Mike Ungewitter a.k.a. Heavy User from wonderful Munich, Germany. Digging vinyl since 1988, Mike got a really impressive collection of Funk and old school Hip Hop records in his room. Time to get to know him a little closer.

Hello Mike, glad you found us on the web and sent some really cool pictures of your room. Tell us more about yourself:“I started digging vinyl in 1983. Got me 2 Technics in 1988 and collected Funk and Hip Hop. Played first time 1988 in a GI Club called Cadillac in Munich. After that I played at many events around Munich area and at art exhibitions for several years also in. In 1998 I had a Radioshow on Evosonic Radio europewide over Satelite till the station was closed due financial reasons. After the year 2000 the DJ scene got boring to me cause all that digital & laptop DJ´s came out, so i decide to go back to my Room and have a Break for a while. Nowadays I concentrate on diggin vinyl records again and play sometimes in small bars or for my friends.”

What music genres do you collect at the moment? “Still old school Hip Hop and Funk-Soul records”

How many records do you have in your collection? “8 meters of shelves storing about 1800 records.”

And what equipment do you use beside your Technics 1200? “Vestax Mixer PMC 05pro Mk2, CD Turntable Denon Dns3000, Vestax CD player Cdx 05 with TascamTT1, Behringer Mixer Mx1604, Oxygen 8 Midi Keyboard, Canton Ergo 22 DC, Tascam US122 Audio Interface,Yamaha Fx EMP100, Boss Dr.Sample sp202, Akai Reel To Reel GX265D, Denon Amplifier PMA920, Behringer BCD3000 Dj Controller, Sony Minidisc Player…”

What is your personal highlight of the room? “Of course my Akai Reel to Reel GX 265 D (got it from my father. R.I.P.)”

Your record for the lonely island? “Comptons Most Wanted (CMW) – It´s a Compton Thang… and many more (I Love Barry White)”

This is Mike in his room:

Enough talking! Let’s listen to some music by Mike Ungewitter:
http://www.divshare.com/download/3925578-b78

IKEA is DJs best friend for affordable and functional storage capabilities. Their Expedit series considered as the most used record shelve around the world. The featured rooms here on our site tell the truth. As featured on the wonderful blog IKEA Hackers, we found this LP storage queensize bed by contributor Maximilian. The construction is able to store about 500 records. Would you like to sleep as The Princess and the Vinyl?

source: IKEA Hackers

We all love collecting and listening to new and outstanding albums and single vinyl records. With this topic, we present you a selection of 5 to 10 vinyl records (primarily electronic music) that moved us in the last few weeks and are worth sharing with you here on the site. This topic will not end in a buyers guide, toplist or paid promotion for the artists. It’s all about a good taste of sophisticated music that does not only work in a club. We try to keep this thing up monthly from now on and love to hear your feedback to the topic and featured records in here. Here is our first selection #01 – What do you think?

LP – Long Arm – The Branches Deluxe Edition (Release: 2013-01-17, 2×12″ Clear Vinyl)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | HHV.de

LP – Tito Wun & Damiano Von Erckert – Mr. Pink, What Have You Been Smokin’? (Release: 2013-01-23)

Order straightforward through: HHV.de

EP – Four Tet – Lion Jamie XX Remix / Jupiters Happa Remix (Release: 2012-12-04)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | HHV.de

LP – Usio – Kuwa Huru (Release: 2013-02-18, 2×12″)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | DECKS.de

LP – Praezisa Rapid 3000 – 314159265 (Release: 2013-01-29, 1×12″)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | HHV.de

LP – TM404 – TM404 (Release: 2013-02-01, 2×12″)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | HHV.de

LP – Flume – Flume (Release: 2013-02-20, 2×12″)

Order straightforward through: AMAZON | HHV.de

Found this selection useful? We’d be happy to hear your two cents – Leave your comment below.

Next stop on our journey is the room by DJ Naidar from Adelaide, Australia. Mostly completed with accoustic foam, this room went through a long and expensive buildup with a dual wall and self taught sound engineering lessons. Is this is the perfect room for playing loud and continuous Speedcore and Hardcore Techno sessions?

Hello Matt, nice to see pictures of the whole buildup of your room on our site. Please tell us how it all started.
“Started out DJ’ing for a bit of fun in 2005 and the love of music, and to meet people etc.. Have been pretty distant over the last 6/7 years though so haven’t got out anywhere near as much as I’d hoped. I have 2 awesome kids and an awesome girl, who all love jumping around to bangin hardcore :)”

Your room seems to have a lot of space for vinyl records. How many do you have in your collection?
“Approx 6500 of hardcore, speedcore, darkcore, drum n bass, tech, liquid, old skool, and a few other harder genres. There’s also some house, deep house, and hard house.”

How long did you take to built that room?
“3 weeks on n off. All started cause I had no where decent to mix. The original room being double brick, sound used to bounce around horribly and was highly noticable and distracting. I think this came about from just needing a change, and needing somewhere functional, comfortable and personal.”

What was the most difficult thing during the buildup?
“Containing sound, and getting the right sound inside the room. The walls are a dual wall hardwood and 18mm MDF. The outter wall contains 2x sets of R35 insulation. The inner wall is completely seperated from the outter wall with a 2 inch air gap that doesn’t come into contact with the outer wall. The ceiling is a dual ceiling too though using 16mm MDF due to the weight saving. Initially, we’d planned for a dual door setup with the inner being sound proof (costly door @ $2500). During the build the sound proof door was damaged and had to be removed. Once the door was left out, I stopped caring about how much sound was leaking, as a standard sliding door just doesn’t cut it. this was a blessing in disguise, as I was able to add air conditioning once the sound barrier was leaking (walls and ceiling aren’t a total loss, still does a great job). Before the A/C was added, there was only 2 hours of air period, and the room heated up, so it eared the name of ‘sweatshop’. A/C is wondering, especially with the thick walls, and zero air flow, and a pleasure especially during the hot days.”

“Getting the sound right inside was much harder than expected. I had read a fair amount on how to do it, but until i experienced it, I knew nothing. Originally I used 14 sheets of 1200×1500 mm, dense accustic foam for the walls, and 25 rectangle 2″ audio tiles for the ceiling. Also an industrial carpet. This was just such an overkill, I had read that it was possible to make a room too dead, but I simply didn’t understand, and didn’t care, afterall after the dual brick sound bouncing room, I was happy for a pretty dead room. It was just too crazy. After completion, I remember my misses standing at 1 side of the room talking, and me at the other end, struggling to her. The sound was so dead it was scary, nothing sounded good in it and powering the room was difficult (continually adding volume until there’s no more to add or reverb hit). The foam removal stage began from the walls and ceiling. Trial and error, stop when it sounds great. Now it sounds awesome. I should’ve put the sound system in before applying any foam, then apply where needed. Now I know, and learnt a costly lesson. Next time, I’ll be doing it quite differently that’s for sure.”

What equipment do you use in your room?
“3x Technics 1210 mk2 Turntables, 2x Pioneer CDJ 900 CD Players, 1x Pioneer DJM 2000 Mixer (w 3.18 Nexus update), 2x JBL JRX 525 (dual 15″), 2x JBL EON 315 Monitors (15″), 1x JBL JRX 118SP Sub (18″), 1x Crown XLS 602 AMP, 1x Phonix i7600 EQ/RTA, 1x Composer PRO-X Compressor/Limiter, Laptop w Rekordbox”

What are your personal hightlights of the room?
“Comfy. Great sound. Stocked beer fridge :)”

What’s your all time favourite record in your collection?
“Spor – Dante’s Inferno

Connect:
http://www.facebook.com/djnaidar

Pimp my studio! IKEA UK joins the DJ trend and helps DJ and producer Harry Love to rebuilt his really messy rooms. They bring his studio back to live with Expedit shelves for his records and shoe tracks for his synth and gear. Another proof that Ikea is one of the basic essentials for every DJ. Must see for everyone of you that is going to renovate their room in the future.

Click Play and enjoy:

http://youtu.be/dMIYX_bNnF0

F#*/% Flash, here we go again with some oldschool vinyl and turntable GIF animations. Fast internet connection recommended. Feel free to loose yourself in these 25 really cool animated pictures found on the web. By the way, did you know that the GIF file format has first been introcuded by Compuserve in 1987 and surrendered 25 years beside all the powerful other file formats till present?

All animations found on the amazing tumblr blogs Vinyles Passion and Vinyl Liebe.

Want more? check our other parts with a lot more vinyl animations here: PART 1 and PART 2

Huge piece of conscious Beguine rhythm song here from the Calypso champion they call The Mighty Sparrow. “Black & White Love” is not just romantic and enchanting but also carries that irony and humor typical of this entertainer and social commentator.

Listen to “Black & White Love” written and performed by Mighty Sparrow a.k.a. Francisco Slinger

This steamy Caribbean cruise track may in fact be the B-Side, but with “Bang Bang Lulu” interpreted on the other side, who really cares which is the A-Side here?
So click HERE for the other side of this week’s dig, the traditional and popular Carribean Song: “Bang Bang Lulu” … containing absolutely no explicit lyrics. Pure Genius.

This is the proof that great sounds can also come from little micro homestudios. Producer and record collector elpierro from Erlangen, Germany shows us his minimal setup and tells us about his first contact with electronic music.

Hello Pierro, great to see a small and perfectly fine-tuned setup beside all these massive studios on our site. Tell us, how you get involved in the electronic music scene? “I was born 1977 in Thuringia and living in Erlangen since 2001. At the age of fifteen, I discovered first preferences for electronic. Since 1994 I’ve visiting the club MUNA regularly, where I discovered my passion for “house-music“. These years were for sure formative for my musical productions. I am producing electronic music since early 2009, now”

Are there some artists, you already worked with? “Keinzweiter, Emanuel Satie, Thomas Stieler, Funtom, Rubberlips, DJ Mourad, etc.”

As we can see in the picture above, you also collect records. How many records do you have in your collection? “About 700 pieces. I am collecting vinyl since 1993.”

I am sure most of our readers can identify your setup at one glance. But for all others, what do you use for you music productions? “KRK Rokit 5 monitor speakers, AKAI LPK 25, Ableton Live 8, AKG MK II Headphones, NI Audio II Interface”

What are your personal highlights of your studio? “That’s Loana, my little daughter and the highlight of my whole life. She gives me inspiration for my productions and is the most important part around my living room studio.”

Let us know some of your all time favourite records:
“The Deep – Dom Dom, Ron Trent – Altered States, Kerri Chandler – The Sound Is Yours (Instrumental Remix)”

Connect:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/elpierro/115828008444671
http://www.beatport.com/artist/elpierro/136296

Another great short documentary about the love of vinyl records and their manufacturing process made by NEKTAR. 16 minutes, recorded over 6 weeks, travelling through Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the UK. “For The Record exposes a number of notions about why vinyl is such an indelible medium and how it continues to remain popular in the the face of opposing format change.” Must see!

Featuring: Dr Dub, Vinylium, Vinylrecorder.com, Audiowerker, MY45 vinylpress, Centraldubs, Duophonic, Metropolis Studios, The Vinyl Factory and Dub Studio. For The Record is an ongoing research project exploring the world of vinyl.

PRESS PLAY

by NEKTAR