[DarthNul]

I use the 2.5 liter Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner that is exactly like the Lyman.

It is much quieter than my vibratory tumbler.

It is faster than walnut in a tumbler, and more thorough, but it is also more "hands on". It gets the primer pockets clean. I'll run 4 to 6 cycles of 8 minutes each.

It does not polish the brass.

I use tap water. Some folks use distilled water but it doesn't get things any cleaner. It's just supposed to prevent water spots on the dried brass. If you rinse the brass after cleaning (and you REALLY should) it's irrelevant. Maybe if you did your final rinse in distilled water but I've never seen spots on any of my clean brass. If you polish after cleaning that'll take the spots off anyway.

I use either the Hornady brass cleaning solution or 1 oz of CLR and a drop of detergent to 30 oz of water. The CLR seems to be a little quicker and it's also cheaper to use. Both solutions look, smell and feel the same. There are other home brew solution recipes on the Internets. Some of them can dissolve the zinc out of the brass so be careful and examine the brass closely for pinkish coloration.

I would not put a handgun in it. I would put gun parts in it but only with the solution for gun parts. Don't use the brass cleaning stuff for gun parts.

Don't fill the thing up to the top with brass. You want the top of the brass to be about 3/4" below the top of the solution.