Thanks vgersh99, that's exactly what I needed.
I also found a 'tr' command to get rid of more unprintable characters:
tr -d '\001'-'\011''\013''\014''\016'-'\037''\200'-'\377' < filein > fileout
Source: "Very short guide to sed, tr, cut and od"
Author: Sakari Mattila
I might as well share a little more

To see all characters in a file or output, use 'od'.
$ echo "hello world" | od -x
0000000 6865 6c6c 6f20 776f 726c 640a
0000014
Notice that h is 68, e is 65 , l is 6c, o is 6f, etc
$ echo "hello world" | od -c
0000000 h e l l o w o r l d \n
0000014
$ echo "hello\t world" | od -c
0000000 h e l l o \t w o r l d \n
0000015
-Brent