For many of my years in this hobby, static plagued my enjoyment of vinyl playback. I used to (carefully) remove the polonium strip from a Staticmaster brush and glue it to the underside of a Watts Dust Bug until I found the needle talk to be audible after switching to a lower noise phono preamp. Rabco, H-K, Linn, Technics, SOTA...all had static. I used a Discwasher Zerostsat for years. Then I got a Well Tempered TT/TA and have never had a pop since 1989...heating season, summertime all the same. My theory is it’s the viscous damping and the acrylic platter that together make it immune. Whatever the reason, WT has solved an age old conundrum of vinyl playback and no one seems to regard this as a breakthrough that should be emulated. Has anyone else identified another make of TT similarly static-proof? Clearaudio uses a synthetic platter and a magnetic bearing that may confer the same benefit, but I’ve never lived with one.
