Mijostyn, Antinn, and anyone else anal enough to be interested, here is the Shure Corporation website where they post pdf files on many questions that arise with respect to playing LPs:https://service.shure.com/Service/s/article/high-fidelity-phonograph-cartridge-technical-seminar?lan...I call your attention to the paper on static charge. They describe many interesting experiments in some detail and also mention that they found no evidence that friction between the diamond stylus tip and the groove is an important cause of static charge build-up. I agree it would be more forceful if they had mentioned how they came to that conclusion.
Mijo, you wrote above, "The other theory as to how static forms on records is that the spinning record creates "friction" with air generating the charge." That is exactly one hypothesis that I already put forward. (See any of 3 posts above.) I don't know if it's valid any more than you do. One recent search led me to a statement that air per se is probably not such a good electron donor, but that dust particles and/or moisture in air may confer a charge to a good electron acceptor, like vinyl. If so, we are back to your obsession with dust, and you have one more reason to obsess.
I drive the Sound Labs with a pair of Atma-sphere OTL amplifiers that started life as "MA-240s", a model that was discontinued in the late 90s. It originally used six 6C33C triodes as output tubes, but I have modified mine to use four 7241 triodes, which collectively produce the same amount of power (~100W into 16 ohms, maybe). I have also built my amps from parts supplied by Atma-sphere such that each tube has its own driver tube. This enables me to set bias separately on each tube, so there is no single tube hogging current and doing most of the work. Many other tweaks in the circuit as well. The Sound Lab speakers are tweaked in that I removed all the passive crossover parts and drive the audio step-up transformers (two of them in the SLs, one for bass and one for treble) in parallel directly from the OTLs. This dramatically increased both the speaker impedance (measured at several frequencies from 20Hz to 10kHz) and the efficiency of the speaker. No subwoofer used so far.
The Beveridge speakers are direct-driven by the Beveridge direct-drive amplifiers I described earlier. The 2SWs require a woofer as they are designed to go down to ~100Hz. For woofers, I use a pair of transmission lines I built myself when I was an intern, nearly 50 years ago. I modeled them after the TL woofer section of the IMF Monitor speakers. They incorporate KEF B139 woofers that are extremely low in distortion but do give up a bit of the very extreme low bass as a trade-off. The woofers are driven separately from a Threshold amplifier that gets signal from a Dahlquist electronic crossover. The 2SW has its own built-in electronic hi-pass filter, and I drive that directly.
That experiment you mention, if you intend to measure bias V on an ESL while grounding your meter to house ground and touching your HV probe to a stator (?), sounds possibly dangerous. I myself would not do it. For under $100 you can get a decent electrostatic charge meter that should allow measurement of the charge without anything touching anything, with ground to the speaker.
Mijo, you wrote above, "The other theory as to how static forms on records is that the spinning record creates "friction" with air generating the charge." That is exactly one hypothesis that I already put forward. (See any of 3 posts above.) I don't know if it's valid any more than you do. One recent search led me to a statement that air per se is probably not such a good electron donor, but that dust particles and/or moisture in air may confer a charge to a good electron acceptor, like vinyl. If so, we are back to your obsession with dust, and you have one more reason to obsess.
I drive the Sound Labs with a pair of Atma-sphere OTL amplifiers that started life as "MA-240s", a model that was discontinued in the late 90s. It originally used six 6C33C triodes as output tubes, but I have modified mine to use four 7241 triodes, which collectively produce the same amount of power (~100W into 16 ohms, maybe). I have also built my amps from parts supplied by Atma-sphere such that each tube has its own driver tube. This enables me to set bias separately on each tube, so there is no single tube hogging current and doing most of the work. Many other tweaks in the circuit as well. The Sound Lab speakers are tweaked in that I removed all the passive crossover parts and drive the audio step-up transformers (two of them in the SLs, one for bass and one for treble) in parallel directly from the OTLs. This dramatically increased both the speaker impedance (measured at several frequencies from 20Hz to 10kHz) and the efficiency of the speaker. No subwoofer used so far.
The Beveridge speakers are direct-driven by the Beveridge direct-drive amplifiers I described earlier. The 2SWs require a woofer as they are designed to go down to ~100Hz. For woofers, I use a pair of transmission lines I built myself when I was an intern, nearly 50 years ago. I modeled them after the TL woofer section of the IMF Monitor speakers. They incorporate KEF B139 woofers that are extremely low in distortion but do give up a bit of the very extreme low bass as a trade-off. The woofers are driven separately from a Threshold amplifier that gets signal from a Dahlquist electronic crossover. The 2SW has its own built-in electronic hi-pass filter, and I drive that directly.
That experiment you mention, if you intend to measure bias V on an ESL while grounding your meter to house ground and touching your HV probe to a stator (?), sounds possibly dangerous. I myself would not do it. For under $100 you can get a decent electrostatic charge meter that should allow measurement of the charge without anything touching anything, with ground to the speaker.