This vacuum cleaner for your vinyl ensures smooth grooves for crate diggers

The thrill of a crate dig is unmatched for the vinyl-enthusiast — there’s nothing quite like turning up at a record fair or car boot and finding a rare pressing from a long-forgotten label, or even merely an original classic pressing in the age of the re-release. But whether you’re buying second hand or looking to take better care of your existing collection, you’re going to want to make sure your records are clean before the needle hits the groove.

Enter the Pro-Ject VC Mini. A minimalist, unassuming box measuring just 230mm × 155mm × 185mm, it’s essentially a vacuum cleaner for your vinyl collection.

And it’s a pretty simple idea — pop your grimey (the condition, not the musical genre) record on top, and the box will spin it at 30 RPM, pushing a cleaning solution through the grooves before sucking everything away into a built-in tank.

The vacuum process also helps to remove static build up on the records too, meaning that dust removed will find it harder to settle in the future.

You’ve got everything you need to get cleaning straight out of the box too. There’s a cleaning brush to get surface-level dust off, a magnetic clamp, a self-adhesive strip arm, and a 100ml bottle of Pro-Ject’s Wash it 2 vinyl-safe cleaning fluid.

The Pro-Ject VC-E Mini goes on sale in April, priced at £249, available from Henley Audio and hi-fi dealers nationwide.

Looking for some new records to spin… and maybe give a nice good spring cleaning to at the same time? We recently caught up with Mercury Prize winner Joe Armon-Jones of Ezra Collective, who highlighted his favourite record shops for picking up once-in-a-lifetime vinyl. And if you’re looking for inspiration as to what to actually buy, be sure to check out our list of the 50 coolest albums of all time, ever.

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