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Here's my RCM. I built this thing about twenty years ago in my old apartment, with hand tools and whatever was at hand. If I was to build it today, it would be a whole lot snazzier, with hardwoods and acrylic and maybe even workmanship. But it probably wouldn't clean records any better. This is design-decisions-are-all-based-on-using-the-stuff-you-have-at-hand-and-the-tools-you-happen-to-have sort of project. I started out with a set of Nitty Gritty lips and went from there. So I ended up with a pretty shameless Nitty Gritty clone. All I was going for was a plenum to hook a vacuum to, something to hold the lips and a sub platter with which to rotate the record. I made the plenum be the whole structure (A Rat Shack project box. A small Pelican case would work. About anything would work.) but you wouldn't have to do that, say, if you started with a broken turntable from a thrift store. In which case, a piece of PVC pipe would do it. My lips are mounted on a piece of CPVC plumbing pipe, sawed in half. I forget how I made the slot. A broken hacksaw blade, a Dremel tool. who knows. The end pieces are craft store plastic, ABS, I assume. The "bearing" is a piece of wooden dowel in a half-blind (so that it's not a huge leak) hole in a piece of wood under the top of the box. The record spindle is the same piece of dowel, turned down by chucking it in a drill and running it against sandpaper. That's actually a piece of cleverness. By making the bearing spindle and record spindle out of the same piece, you don't have to worry about concentricity. All you have to do is get the lips more or less lined up with the bearing hole. I doubt I had any measurement or layout instruments beyond a ruler or maybe a combination square in those days.The spindle doesn't reach the bottom of the hole. There's no ball. The actual bearing, such as it is, is a stock of thin nylon washers (from the hardware store) between the case and the platter. That's also how I adjusted the height of the platter to match the lips. The platter is ABS from the craft store (but it could be anything) and the mat is whatever piece of rubber that wasn't quick enough to get out of the way of an Exacto. Nothing needs to be accurate, actually round, or rigid. The hole in the back is sized to be about mid way up the taper of an inch and a quarter vacuum cleaner hose connector. The other holes can be covered with tape to regulate the strength of the vacuum. Right now I'm using a vacuum head from Home Depot that goes on a five gallon bucket as my vacuum source. i have used a regular shop vac and one of those little one gallon jobs in the past. Basically, anything will work. The "record clamp" is a piece of chipboard with a piece of mouse pad glued on the bottom. Now that I know a little about woodworking, it is really offensive to my sensibilities, but it does turn the record just fine. I made a bunch of brushes (at bottom) that are pretty much clones of the Nitty Gritty brush (the next one up). There's nothing to say that the round part needs to be the diameter of the Nitty Gritty ones. It looks like the investment I made in a piece of 5/8s dowel was the deciding factor there. Just a cylinder of some sort (like the thing on top) would do fine. The real work is done by the velvet on the brush. A tiny amount of velvet will make a lifetime supply of brushes, so just go to the cloth store and buy some of every kind they've got and experiment on some dollar bin records. Some kinds clean way better than others. Some leave tiny bits of fibers behind. You'll need a grooming brush. The little round one works. So does a toothbrush. You could make your own lips by the same process of experimentation. I didn't bother. I've done double stick tape and hot glue to fasten the velvet to the brush. It doesn't matter. Just keep the fastening away from the part that comes in contact with the record. I made one brush that clamped the velvet in place mechanically. If you make your brush body out of wood, over time, the fluid will raise the grain of the wood and you'll have to sand it down again to make sure your brush stays smooth. If I were to make some brushes now, I'd use plastic for the cylinder. (Acrylic rod with a hardwood handle would be fun. A 10 cent piece of PVC pipe would be more sensible.) Since I ended up with a Nitty Gritty cone, I ended up with Nitty Gritty issues as well. One of which is that while you wash the first side of the record, the other side is running against your lips and covering them with filth. You'll spend half your time grooming the lips. So I eventually went to Bed Bath and Beyond and got a vinyl pad that's meant to go in the bottom of a sink (to keep glasses from breaking, I think) I place the record on said vinyl pad to wash the first side and that way the lips first come in contact with the record while vacuuming the first side and they don't get anywhere near as dirty. You certainly don't have to make the lips on the bottom, particularly if you start out with an old turntable. You could make the platter support the whole record and make the lips on a wand, like the VPI. All you would need to do is to fabricate a wand mechanism out of telescoping tubes or hose or something and figure out how to keep the wand radial to the record and in contact with it when it should be and to move it out of the way when it shouldn't. If I ever run into the makings, I'd be tempted to do another machine with that kind of design. I'd also really like to make a motor-driven platter, although honestly, it really isn't much effort to turn the record by hand. This isn't a precise affair. And it isn't like plumbing, where there's 65 psi of water pressure to blow everything to bits if you don't make your joints perfectly. If it leaks a little, who cares. Any likely vacuum source will have way more capacity than you'll actually need. Whatever you find to in the way of parts and materials can probably be convinced to work. If you feel the mood, just go for it. If pretty isn't an object, an afternoon, maybe two, and you're there. And you've saved 600 bucks. Oh. I have a foot pedal switch to turn the vacuum on and off. That makes life easier. And working out some sort of muffling/sound deadening for the vacuum helps. You could put it in the closet or the next room, even.

Bill Evans Trio - Consecration: The Last Complete Collection loving this

Halou - Wiser Thanks for the recommendation Dusty. I like it!