I am getting my first vibratory case cleaner in the very near future and I’m curious which media you all prefer: corn cob or walnut shell and why you prefer it? Thanks.

I’ve used the green corncob media and the red tuff nut
I think the tuff nut is more abrasive so requires less time
to clean the brass. Just my experience could be wrong.

Listen..... do yourself a favor and buy the walnut lizard bedding (which is walnut hulls) from Amazon. It's like 6 bucks for 10 pounds.

Dump it on your tumbler bowl with about 2 tblsp of mineral spirits and 1 tblsp of NuFinish car wax.

Don't waste your money on the special tumbler mixes. You'll get the same result for WAY less money

+1 on the lizzard bedding, it doesn't get stuck in flash holes, I add a pea size lump of Mother's mag wheel polish to mine.

Wet rotary tumbler. Cuts down on dust/lead dust. Never go back to a regular tumbler.

Walnut, and none of the treated stuff. Walnut works faster than corn cob, but corn cob will give a higher shine,
Your not making jewelry, just cleaning brass.

I've been using corn cob for 20 years.

+1 on Mother's Mag Wheel Polish

If you use the media that has red rouge on it, be sure to wash the brass prior to running it through the full length sizer or neck sizer or the rouge on the brass will scratch your dies!

For many years I used cheap white rice... It was easy to see when it became dirty. Not as aggressive as other materials but a big bag at the asian market was cheap and lasted a long time.

14-20 mesh Corn cob blasting media, 25 bucks for 40 lbs. delivered. Doesn’t get stuck in flash holes, add 2 capfuls of Iosso media polish.

steel

Water, a pinch of dish soap and a wee sprinkle of lemi-shine

Echoing the fellow who said he's never going back to dry tumbling again.

I can tumble and be loading in 1 hour and 15 minutes max from start to finish, what’s your timeline?

You in a hurry?

Either way results will never be the same as wet/steel pins.

Nope, no hurry but my brass never gets dirty enough to require steel pins. Besides I stuck too the op’s question. Vibratory tumbler instead of injecting BS that has nothing to do with it. The only reason to use steel pins is to clean up marginal range brass to sell as better than what it is.

Don't buy the treated media! I used the Lyman red rouge media once and it left a coating of rouge inside every case. Ended up washing the walnut shell to remove the rouge ad re-tumbling the cases.
Buy the lizard bedding as advised above, add a little liquid car wax if you want. Walnut will do in one hour what corn cob will do in two hours.

What results are you referring to? Shiny versus jewelry shiny? How does that show a difference on target?
Wet cleaning equals more time and more mess.

I prefer walnut shell, no grit and no shine additives.

Walnut lizard bedding.

Thanks for all the feedback, I appreciate your help. I bought a Hornady M1 tumbler and walnut media today. Thanks again.

Another vote for walnut lizard bedding. I add 1/4 of a used dryer sheet and sometimes a capful of mineral spirits.

Dale

I started with treated corncob but after trying walnut have not used any for 7 or 8 years.

I put some car polish in it and let it run for a while before putting cases in after sizing.

Funny thing, I used Lyman walnut shell with the red rouge for years….got sick and tired of the red dust that would coat everything after tumbling my cases for a couple of hours.
Then I went to corn cob and have never looked back, no discernible dust to speak of, brass comes out bright and shiny and I am satisfied with the end result.
Tried sonic cleaning, as I have one for other projects, and also wet tumbling with pins…cannot stand drying, waiting and prepping brass with dinged case mouths, wet primer residue and the hassle.

Cheers.