Disk Washer is/was a brand name. I lived in the UK for many years and had one back in the 80's. It worked very well. The record was presented vertically into a slot which had fine brushes and electrolytically charged "fingers" of some sort of plastic. These were supposed to attract the dust and particles that were dislodged by the brushes. The record rotated on its edge in the slot. The edge of the record was actually sitting on two rubber rollers within the guts of the machine one of which was the shaft of a small motor. There was a proprietary spray in an atomizer bottle which was supposed to be applied to the record as it rotated. I was often amazed at how much improvement this machine could make even in a brand new record.





Regarding vinyl players to MP3 I think there are several out there. I have one made by "Ion" which I purchased in Canada. I think that Radio Shack might carry them. It seems to work very well and is a Plug & Play USB device. Half the value of the thing is the software that comes with it. It does a good job; breaks the tracks in to individual files, finalizes the process when done and the turntable shuts itself off when finished. All of that means that you can put on a record and to on to do other things. When you come back everything is shut down and the job is done ... except for typing in all of the track names if it's a recording that isn't listed on CCDB or similar (which you could copy and paste). It also has an imput for a tape deck which is handy as it also interfaces with the software.





Re: "jaysbob" - I've seen many cautions about connecting a standard turntable to your sound card without using a preamp in between as the output level is so high that it will blow the card. I guess that you pulled it off but it doesn't sound like a good idea to me.