Record Sleeves

Sleeves as any record collector knows, are often in a very sorry state.

For all except top quality undamaged film sleeves I always replace them after cleaning for several reasons.

They usually contain a lot of paper dust and often come with the bonus of cat hairs, grit, dead human skin flakes, food residues and other delights. These can all re-contaminate your lovingly cleaned records.

It is not uncommon to see a spot on an old record that has grown mould feeding on the protein of the original contamination, these mould spores will still be in the sleeve ready to pounce on any fingerprint grease you put back onto the records surface.

Some sleeves are part of the artwork of the record. For these I take two alternative approaches. If possible insert the new sleeve into the artworked original, works well for cardboard sleeves. For others I just keep them inside the LP's outer sleeve alongside the record in its new film lined paper sleeve.

As I said on the front page, if you washed your feet you wouldn't put them back into dirty socks, the same logic must apply to records. It also helps me keep track of which of my collection has had the full cleaning process.