Vinyl “Pops & Clicks” eliminators

Wolf, just play a blank groove and make a tape loop out of it. Now you can justify buying that reel to reel machine:)

Back to the theme of this thread, if you use a dust cover and conductive sweep arm and don't buy records from chakster a pop and tick eliminator is totally unnecessary.

Grinding dust into the surface of your records is a destructive habit. 
Think about it chakster. You are playing your records at a pressure of 52 thousand psi generating thousands of volts of static electricity which draws dust like a magnet from as much as a foot away during the process. Then you spend money on a record cleaning device which will temporarily remove whatever dust is on the record but never returning it to like new condition and you start the whole process over. All because you were to cheap to buy a dust cover listening to other people who say dust covers ruin the sound because they are too cheap to buy a dust cover. Wonderful. 
Dust covers were considered mandatory back in the day not only to protect records but also to keep dust out of delicate tonearms. Then manufacturers started coming out with wild and crazy shapes for turntables to make them look "cooler" because we all know that cool looking equipment sounds better. Unfortunately, it made fitting dust covers difficult and more expensive. So, they didn't instead preferring to generate the myth that dust covers sound bad. Like so many obedient free thinkers a large percentage of the audiophile community bought it and we have been destroying billions of records ever since. At least we are supporting the hard workers in the retipping and record cleaning industries.      

Lewm as I explained before the pressure is right and the contact area is in square inches. The reason the stylus does not go through your finger is because your skin is very pliable. As the stylus bears into your skin the skin "tents" allowing other structures to bear like the cantilever rapidly increasing the surface area involved by a factor of thousands and the psi drops dramatically.
I clean the brush between sides on a felt pad I keep near by. I clean both the brush and the felt pad occasionally with alcohol. The brush catches everything on the record and tracks along with the tonearm perfectly. 

I forgot to mention Jim that you want to keep the back end high. I would have designed it with the bristles perpendicular to the record. I also stuck a square of felt down next to the turntables to wipe the brush off on between sides. I clean the felt once in a while with a record brush which I ceremoniously wipe off on my shirt to my wife's chagrin. 
Do let us know how you like it particularly it's effect on the static charge of your record collection. Also let us know how brand new records fair and whether or not you ever feel the need to clean them.

Thanx,
Mike

James, I had a dust bug! They did not have conductive carbon bristles back then and we had the right idea but in the end I think the Dust bug increased the static charge on the record which led to more trouble. I even tried spraying it lightly with distilled water which helped for two or three sides before the felt bristles got dirty then you could not clean them effectively until it dried off:( The first conductive bristles came around in the early 80's. I bought a record brush that had them. In about a week it dawned on me and I cut up the brush and made a sweep arm out of an aluminum extrusion. It was not the prettiest thing but it worked great about a year later a very similar device was released on the market and I bought one immediately. It certainly was a lot more polished than my device but it did not have an adjustable counterweight and it leaned too heavily on its bristles. So, I added lead from fishing weights until I felt it balanced the way I wanted. So much for the polished appearance. This little cheap arm from Sleeve City is the first arm that comes almost ready to go. The sliding weight won't stay in one place so I moved it all the way up front and put a small drop of crazy glue on the shaft to hold it in place. The counter weight at the back is threaded. To keep it from turning once it was set I put some low strength Loc Tite on the threaded shaft. Adjust the counter weight so the bristles just touch the record. It will track the record best this way. Once set you will never have to touch it. 

jameswei, add the sweep arm. It is only $20.00. Your records will stay even cleaner as they will not hold any static charge so will not attract duct on their way back and forth to the record cover and any incidental dust on the record will be swept out of the way of your 52,000 psi stylus.

cleeds. half way down is a chart showing the contact area of Soundsmith's styli.   https://www.sound-smith.com/articles/stylus-shape-information The Line Contact stylus is listed as 46.7 micrometers squared. 6 X 50 micrometers defines the tip shape of the stylus not the contact surface area. I rounded out the 46.7 to 50 for simplicity's sake. The reason that the stylus does not perforate your finger is that skin is soft an flexible. The tip become buried in your skin which then also contacts the rest of the stylus and the cantilever spreading out the contact surface area by several orders of magnitude. If I took a very sharp sowing needle and used the tip to apply two grams of pressure to the tip of your finger I promise you will not be a happy camper. Common sense does not work very well. Scientist design experiments for just that reason. If you continue to use "common sense" as your principle metric in life I guarantee you will make one mistake after another. 

Elizabeth, ok, so I will take a one inch square metal rod place it on the top of your head and put 2000 lb on it. Any idea? Math is just that, Math. Math allows us to predict what will happen in real terms. Pressure produces heat. Next time you are near a compressor after it runs place your hand on the tank (not the motor). It gets pretty warm and that is only about 120 psi. Now when a stylus runs into a piece of dirt and can do one of three things. It can push it out of the way. It can capture it (the stuff you clean off with your stylus brush or it can run over it in which case it actually accelerates the dust into the vinyl wedging it firmly in place. That tiny amount of heat is like a spark which is enough applied to a very small particle to "melt" the dust into the vinyl and there are electron micrographs of this. But really, just play an really old record that you have played 100 times. A bit more pops and clicks than when it was new. And no matter how many times you try to clean that record it will always be noisier than when it was new because you can not clean that embedded dust off. I have records I got in the late 60's before I had perfected my record maintenance method. I always had a good stylus and was using cartridges that tracked at 0.75 grams but no matter how I clean those records, and I have used ultrasonic cleaners and brush/vacuum cleaners, there is never any significant improvement. 
Cleeds, get a dust cover from those people I mention above and you will be happy as a lark. As for the math? I can do the same 2000 lb/per square inch experiment on your head if you like. Now just for fun here is the math. Soundsmith says the contact area of it's line contact stylus is 50um2. 1 um2 = 1.55 e-9 inches2. This means 50 um2 = 0.0000000077 inches2. 2 grams = 0.004 lb . 0.004/0.0000000077 = 51,948lb/inches2.
52 thousand psi. So now guys lets do the same experiment on cleed but we will put 52 thousand pounds on his head. We can skip the metal rod.

Lewm7, I suppose if you had a particularly bad dust cover but in the case of my dust covers there may even be a degree of improvement with the covers down as they do diminish sound pressure levels within. Both my tables are also suspended which may make a difference. Many tables now come without covers or covers that are very difficult to use (not hinged). For something like a Clearaudio or VPI table you use 1/4" Lexan. You have a bottom plate which the table sits on and the cover is hinged to the bottom plate. There are several companies that will make these for you. Here is one  https://www.displaycasej.com/custom-audio-covers These guys did the one for my 30/12 and the workmanship is perfect. Now, even if there was some degradation in sound quality there is a major improvement is the lifespan and performance of your records which to my mind is more important. 
For the sweep arm this is the one I use  https://www.sleevecityusa.com/Antistatic-Record-Cleaning-Arm-p/tac-01.htm. It is a bit light weight but it works great. The bristles are conductive carbon which is critical. The Integrity arm is nicer but stupidly they use a camel's hair brush which does not conduct! Dumb to say the least. With the Sleeve City arm keep the back end high. You have to position it to the spindle just right to get it to track the whole record. I have a felt mat stuck by the table that I wipe the brush off with. Hook the wire up to chassis ground. I slide the weight all the way forward and crazy glue it in place. I put a little low strength loc tite on the counterbalance weight threads and use the weight to balance the arm. You want the bristles just touching the vinyl. They should not bend! To heavy and the bristles bend in the direction of rotation and just run over the dust instead of picking it up. I have three arms. Every once in a while I will clean off the brush with alcohol and switch to the other arm so the three arms rotate between the two tables. 
I know you have to trust me on this one Lewm but once you have a proper dust cover made you will never live without one again. You can throw your record cleaning machine away and with the brush you can throw your zerostat away. 

Clean, static free records need absolutely no help in this regard. The only remaining problem is background noise like rumble that this unit will not correct. I would never spend this kind of money and tolerate any level of degradation for the rare bad scratch or pop. I also never clean my records. Contrary to popular mythology records come from the manufacturer perfectly clean. If played with a conductive sweep arm (carbon bristles NOT camel's hair!!) and a dust cover the records never get dirty and dust is never ground into the surface as any incidental dust is cleared out of the way of the stylus by the sweep arm as well as discharging the record so it never builds a static charge and therefore does not collect dust. 
If you buy used records then a record cleaning device is mandatory. I do not because every one I have ever played was unacceptably damaged. 
Even after cleaning. Once a dirty record is played it is done for. Thousands of PSI pressure literally melts the dust right into the vinyl surface and there is no system that can repair the damage.