Rosstaman offers good advice. If you do live in a dry climate and have synthetic carpeted floors it is likely that YOU are the source of the static electricity. You can buy a grounding device that plugs into the ground of the electrical outlet at most electirical supply houses (radioshack probably has it too). Electrical techs use these to discharge any built up static electricity on them before they work on something. You could put one of these beside the cleaning machine and touch it right before you clean an album. Then you will not have the static build up that is likely transferring to the album. The other area to check, although I think it's a small possibility, is the grounding of the VPI unit. A floating ground could have some effect on static build up.
Static Build Up On Record Surface
I have a VPI 16.5 record cleaning machine. When I use the standard VPI record cleaning fluid to clean my newly acquired records, I notice an excessive amount of static build up on the record surfaces when the newly cleaned records are played.
VPI owners, is this normal or am I doing something wrong in the cleaning process?
VPI owners, is this normal or am I doing something wrong in the cleaning process?