The long of it:
Man, no matter how much you wash your hands those soft pads start feeling kinda unpleasant to the touch after a while. Compressed air does pretty good on dusting hard surfaces, but on soft pads, that dusty dirty texture just clings to the rubber like crazy.
I’ve been using just a soft cloth with a little water for this type of cleaning forever but it’s never really 100% worked for me. Synth brushes and dry wiping do nothing for rubbery pad texture. Then I suddenly had an “AH-HA!” moment (don’t know why this never occurred to me before) and tried using some “Original” blue Scotch painter’s tape (always available at my house), which has about a medium adhesion and tends to leave hard surfaces without any residue.
It’s actually the perfect size for pads and I used like 1 square of tape per 4 pads, laying it across them and smoothing it with my finger then removing. I did them one by one, but if you aren’t thrifty like I am you could just lay a longer piece of tape across several. I found that 4 pads was the limit I could get out of one piece of tape because all the stuff that comes off of them makes it no longer sticky.
My MPC pads feel literally brand new, no stickiness, they’re now smooth and grippy without that dusty or dirty texture you grow accustomed to. These pads literally feel the best they’ve possibly ever felt.
The short of it: Scotch original blue multi-surface painter’s tape.
This is not rocket science, I’m not going to win a Nobel prize for telling you about the merits of blue tape but give it a try if you know what I’m talking about, you won’t regret it, and your fingertips will thank you for it.