I use both methods and they both have their virtues and vises.
Nothing cleans like wet tumbling. I started with a Harbor Freight tumbler which I used for years. Recently I bought a Frankford Arsenal rotary tumbler to replace the small HF. Dawn dish soap, Lemi Shine and water is the cleaning formula. Primer pockets and the insides of the cases, they come out as clean as the outside. The downside is it's somewhat labor intensive. After the cleaning session the cases must be thoroughly rinsed and if one used SS pins (I do) then they have to be separated and there will always be a few stuck in primer flash holes that have to be picked or pushed out. After that they must be dried and it's best to roll them on a towel to remove some of the water so the cases don't tarnish. If it's rainy or humid, they dry more slowly.
I used wet tumbling pretty much exclusively until recently when upon the discovery of this-
....I began using my dry tumbler with corn cob media again. I had used Brasso for years but the Weiman's cleans and shines brass so much better. Tumbling in corn cob, while it doesn't clean really grimy cases like wet tumbling, is far quicker and if one uses a small enough grit, it never gets suck in flash holes. Last night I sized and trimmed a couple hundred .30 Carbine cases (some of them SUPER sooty, almost black), tossed then into the vibratory cleaner and went to bed. This morning I turned the cleaner off, dumped the entire contents of the tub into a colander than was sitting in a bucket, shook it a bit and in a couple of minutes I was priming cases. Much quicker than wet tumbling. The Weiman's does a fantastic job and while the interior of the cases and primer pockets aren't as clean as they would be with a wet tumbler, this is of little consequence and the outsides really shine-
So, if a person needs to clean some really filthy cases such as those that have been exposed to the elements for a long time, wet cleaning is the way to go, but for cases that have been loaded, fired and immediately picked up, corn cob and a vibratory cleaner is all one needs.
35W