“What’s that? Do I want to meet Charles Kirmuss? As in Kirmuss Audio? Really?” As I’ve already mentioned, I spent way too much time hanging out with my old dealer buddy Arnold Martinez at his Tweak Studio booth in the marketplace at AXPONA 2019. Fortunately, he introduced me to a lot of interesting products (the Dragonfire desktop system that blew my mind) and people…including one “Dr. Kirmuss,” who currently makes one of those new-fangled ultrasonic record cleaners for a reasonable price.
Back in our Buyer’s Guide, which was issued at the very beginning of the year, we included one entry for Kirmuss Audio under accessories. I was dumbstruck when I first edited this submission–you mean I can finally get an ultrasonic record cleaning machine and I won’t have to pay $3500 for it? I’ve written about these machines before, and I’m a big fan, but I kept hearing rumblings across the plains that a second generation of machines were coming that were more streamlined and for much less money. I ran a manual Nitty Gritty machine for over 20 years, so I’m not opposed to doing a little extra work. In the case of the $875 Kirmuss Audio KA-RC-1, you don’t get the drying feature offered by the $3500 machines. But Charles Kirmuss will show you how to do it.
Kirmuss the Magnificent!
Watching him “do it” is worth the price of admission to AXPONA 2019. By doing “it,” of course, I mean demoing his product, and Kirmuss is a master showman when it comes to demonstrating his Kirmuss Audio products. You get the sense that he’s done this all before, a million times, but he still loves his job. He is a showman to a certain extent, but he also backs his claims up right then and there. He has the $100,000 microscope so you can see the results yourself. (He bought that microscope to prove a famous audio reviewer wrong about the effectiveness of the KA-RC-1, and he jokes about sending a $100,000 invoice to him for “consultation fees.”)
You can also get your favorite records cleaned by Dr. Kirmuss for a nominal fee, and there was a line for this at AXPONA. I know a few record stores that do it with some of the more expensive machines, and sometimes for less money–which begs the question of why wouldn’t you just buy the Kirmuss Audio KA-RC-1? For the price of having Dr. Kirmuss cleaning 35 of your records, you could own the KA-RC-1–something I now have to consider!
