Brand New Vinyl Static and Pops

I hope you did not forget to connect the ground wire from Tt to the receiver? If you did not connect it, You will get all those problem you describe.

"Flubbing" does sound like something other than static electricity problem. Look very carefully for things that may be touching each other that normally should not be touching.  Best to get a knowledgeable friend to visit your home and take a look. These sorts of oddball problems are sometimes impossible to solve from afar. Is the cartridge bottoming out against the surface of the LP?  In that case, yes, you need either a new cartridge or a new stylus assembly if your cartridge has replaceable stylus.  But check your VTF else you will ruin even a new cartridge or stylus assembly, if VTF is too high.

Have you cleaned the stylus in-between plays?

DeKay

@jjbeason14 I think we need to know what 'flubbing' means in this case.

One thing that can cause ticks and pops is the input of the phono section overloading at ultrasonic frequencies. This is actually pretty common and is caused by the inductance of the cartridge being in parallel with the capacitance of the tonearm cable- the two in parallel set up an electrical resonance.

In this case the resonance is likely barely above the audio band. It can be as much as 20dB so tracking noise can be boosted quite a lot above the audio signal so the phono section can overload.

Your old cartridge had the same inductance though. So this may not be the reason you're experiencing this. Do you make any other changes- different tonearm cable or the like?

Hey thanks guys!

Flubbing is better described as muffled.  the only change I made to the TT was upgrading the ortofon stylus from red to blue.

Nothing else changed.