Phono stage can minimize tics and pops on vinyl

I've not used my Discwasher in 20 years. I don't need it- a simple dust brush is all I use and that is to prevent dust buildup on the stylus. IOW I'm playing LPs free of ticks and pops with no need to clean them.

I hear the noise on a different plane than the music. In life, if someone sneezes from the 2nd balcony, it sounds from a different place than the orchestra.

@stringreen I understand this bit very well- its why I prefer vinyl, as any surface artifacts are in a different plane from the music, while the colorations (brightness and hardness) of digital are part of the music itself.
However, this statement suggests to me a misunderstanding, I'd like to clear it up:

a good system won’t minimize the clicks.pops, but neither will it emphasize them.

The idea here is that indeed a phono section can affect how many ticks and pops you hear, because they originate due to phono section design issues which is triggered by something on the LP surface. And I hate to say it, but many high end phono sections do have this problem- in fact they emphasize ticks and pops, and people thing they are part of 'a good system'. I think this is because as I pointed out earlier, many people grew up with unstable phono sections and simply thing that ticks and pops just come with the media, which they don't. 

Put another way, if you really do have 'a good system', you will hear less ticks and pops- it will minimize them, without other coloration, such as a loss of highs.

'P&C' I'm guessing means 'ticks and pops'...
The stylus might helps as it might track a different portion of the groove that has less noise, but if your vinyl is undamaged the real benefit comes when you use a stable phono section.

Our UV-1 does not have problems with ticks or pops and its not particularly pricey.

Our MP-3 and MP-1 are not that expensive as high end preamps go- cheaper than ARC, cj and many others. Are others charging more for ticks and pops? 

As Foghorn Leghorn once said 'Ah say there that's a joke, son' :)

Its all a matter of if the designer took all the variables into account- adding stopping resistors to a circuit isn't expensive; making sure its resistant to RFI after that isn't either. After that the big deal is overload margin and as long as you aren't too precious about power supply voltages that can be solved easily too.

@terry9 You are correct. If you want the best sound, you need the best parts. But design is what minimizes ticks and pops; I am saying there is a distinction.

Here are the things that allow for less ticks and pops. As far as I can tell, price isn't one of them:
1) good overload margin. (our phono sections are making nearly 100V peak to peak at overload...)
2) low RFI susceptibility. This also means that LOMC cartridges will not have to be loaded to sound right
3) good circuit stability. In this regard, stopping resistors employed at the inputs of all active devices at the very least.
It does not matter if the circuit is balanced or single ended- we've built both that are perfectly immune to excess ticks and pops. Also equalization built into the feedback loop is not a factor; we've done that too (although our MP-3 and MP-1 employ passive differential EQ). Its also not a matter of tube or solid state, although it does appear that more solid state phono sections are prone to ticks and pops than tube. Finally, bandwidth is not an issue, although there is a pretty good argument for wider bandwidth (we spec our MP-3 and MP-1 phono sections to 100KHz). IOW its a matter of engineering the circuit right, which does not have to have much bearing on the cost. Absolute premium parts aren't needed- the above parameters are.

If the phono section has its ducks in a row, you might be surprised at how few ticks and pops really exist; how few of them you hear over an entire album side, from album to album! This is way better than trying to treat the signal with stuff to get around the problem.