Berliner record question

[Inigo]

Very interesting... Have to test this on some beloved tatty 78s... Maybe this wax treatment could cope with the famous crackle of British records of the thirties?

[CarlosV]

Very interesting... Have to test this on some beloved tatty 78s... Maybe this wax treatment could cope with the famous crackle of British records of the thirties?

This is my experience, Inigo: waxing the disc muffles the high frequencies, reducing the crackle a little bit - the down side of this is that high frequencies of the recorded music go away as well, which is like a medicine that cures the disease but kills the patient. I tried two of these hocus pocus that haunt the collector's minds: waxing and also shellac powder, this last one apparently popular among Japanese collectors. Neither works and both leave a mess on the record surface, quite difficult to remove. The only effective way I found to improve the sound is a thorough cleaning, which currently is all I do on my records.

[Inigo]

During a time in the eighties, mummy at home used a spray cleaner for furniture named 'Pronto' in Spain, a Johnson Wax product. When sprayed on a surface, it resulted to be a creamy waxy oily ivory substance, that you extended with a cloth, then polish and dry with another cloth, leaving the surface shiny and with increased sliding properties. Must be kind of a mixture of waxes. My then already hobby-biten mind immediately happened to think about using that for cleaning the 78s. Results were good. The suitable HMV labels become shiny, much brighter, and colours became vivid and nice. Other plain coloured labels couldn't be waxed this way, and the colour seemed to dissolve on the product. For the shellac surface it was also great, turned it back and shiny, marvelous for greyed records. They also seemed to play better. After the first play, a residue was to be found on the needle, which I believed to be the dry wax removed off the grooves by the needle. This residue was not white, showing that it also served to remove dirt from the depths of the grooves, adhered to the wax. S nice treatment. It left a penetrant waxy odour too, not disagreeable... Never used it again, but I'm being tempted to buy it again, or its modern equivalent... and give it another try.
Of course I always cleaned my records first with mild soap and warm water, etc. I only applied the waxy product when the records were well dry. An intuitive feeling prevented me too use the wax when the records were humid...

Modern version of Pronto