Spin Clean
The Spin-Clean story began in Chicago around 1974 when Fidelitone Inc., a manufacturer that sold record needles and other record accessories to retailers, created a record cleaning device called Spin ‘n Clean.
Fidelitone’s intentions were to try to market their record cleaner in all of the big box stores where they would pile them up on the floor in the now very seventies-looking colourful boxes. They also made the product available to record stores throughout the US. One of their most successful independent record retailers was a company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania owned by Paul C. Mawhinney (my father) called Record-Rama Sound Archives. When you walked into Record-Rama in the mid-seventies, the first thing you saw on the counter was the Spin ‘n Clean Record Washer. We learned that if you demonstrated it, it would sell, and sell it did.
