what are you listening to?

I remember "wet-playing" an album was the new way to preserve your albums and really reduce friction on the stylus, when I was in college (early 70's). I have a large vinyl collection, that I have always kept clean, and I shied away from wet - playing, because even back then, the vinyl had to be super clean, before we could wet-play, and we were supposed to always use distilled water, to avoid the minerals present in hard tap water. Not easy for a college kid to always adhere to. You also could not just flip it over to hear the "B" side without first drying it. The rule of thumb was "once wet-played. always wet-played". An advantage was removing background static (which is dirt/wear in the grooves) when wet-played.
There were several companies that sold the special arms, and they always had their "special solution" that you were supposed to use (Lenco). The big thing was people would start with a somewhat dirty, or dusty record, and create a sludge which the diamond just packed into the groove. Over time this created a lot of buildup film, and if you ever tried to play it "dry", it sounded terrible. I did have one good friend who always wet-played, his albums, and when cassettes came out, he converted his vinyl collection to tape, with one last wet-play. It was one of many things that we tried to save and preserve our collections. I knew a lot of people who swore by using only 100% Isopropyl alcohol to clean their vinyl, about that time as well (mid-70's) and that ruined a lot of great vinyl. Clean vinyl, and a correctly set up tone arm, with a high quality, light tracking stylus, are the best ways to preserve vinyl.
 
I guess I semi wet-play. I have a manual Nitty Gritty for cleaning any vinyl that shows up here new before filing it in the shelves but I use a Discwasher that I've had since the 70s to make a quick swipe of the record before playing. With a friend in the Chemistry Department, I do have a souce of lab-grade distilled water, which is all I use on the Discwasher. I've noticed that not waiting for the record to dry keeps down the noise from the (hopefully few) pops and cueing hash from the early grooves in each side. Normal playing has resumed by about the third song in, though, but there's usually less noise on the disc by then.
 
I use a carbon brush dry always. If I see fingerprints or other skudge I clean with my cleaner and a paint pad. Then I play it while still wet after the paint pad.

The second arm is Micro-Seiki too (the Technics one looks nicer) and it has a brush and lint roller. You index the roller for each side and it’s alarming the amount of stuff that collects on it.

Clean records I just play dry after a carbon brushing.

But wet compared to dry it is certainly audible. Much less surface noise for sure.
 
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