Static electricity....again


Ok, I'm ready to burn the house down and move to Florida. I had a similar problem last winter. I live in Colorado and it's been snowing here like crazy. It is super dry here. My brother fried two pre amps last winter due to lightning bolts flying from his fingers to his pre amp anytime he touched the pre amp...

So here's what I have going on. I have all of my cables lifted off the ground with wooden blocks. My Equipment is plugged into a ps audio quintet, except for my amp which is plugged directly into the wall (porter port).

I don't have any remote controllers in my set-up so whenever I touch my equipment, I ground myself on a screw on the light switch first. I'll have so much electricity built up in my body that I can actually feel the hairs on my legs stand up when I do this.

Okay, well it has gotten to be so bad now that when I am just walking across the room, I can hear a few small pops coming out of my speakers. These are directly related to the static that is building up via my socks dragging across the carpet. I'm %100 sure of that.

My question is, what the heck do I do to remedy this problem before I damage any of my equipment? My house is probably 20 years old. Am I having these issues because the ground in my house is no good?

Btw, last winter when I was having these issues, I sprayed fabric softener all over and that seemed to work for, oh, about 20 minutes.

I'm going to get a humidifier and see how that helps. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated! I'm about ready to change my user name to Zues!
128x128b_limo
Obviously humidifiers are one of the most popular answers to this problem. As Elizabeth mentioned, boiling pots of water also will do the trick. It's simply a matter of adding water vapor to a dry environment. Folks who use vinyl, like me, are even more aware of these issues, as it manifests itself in many more 'pops' when listening. I find a good size room humidifier has solved that problem for me.
I should buy the static mat but I do have a box of dryer sheets and they work fine. Right now, my first taste of 'light' static, all I need to do is to remember to touch one of my racks before I touch any gear and I am good to go. (and, easy to remember as I did fry some fuses last season on one of my amps from static (and the year before, and the year before...)I open my cd tray but then its remote only. When the static gets worse, I just rub my hands on a dryer sheet before I touch anything. I finally got the unscented ones so really no downside. The scented ones kind of made the man cave feel a bit 'girly'.
A more, uh, stubborn problem is the static charge that develops on spinning CDs due to the friction of air. This static charge can be dissipated by using anti static sprays or destat guns on the CD. A static electrical charge is also most unwelcome on interconnects.
On the static on CD thing...I ordered the furustat destate II and have been using it religiously (as well as my walker talisman) on all my cd's since xmas. made some upgrades and I've been in digital bliss. I was in the sound room and just wanted to play a cd without any cermony - just throw it in and have a listen while I read something quickly - and actually noticed that digital sound you get on CD's. slight as it was, it was there. The new destate really does improve the sound of my cd's. I was able to easily tell the disc hadn't been treated. Pretty slick.
Cerrot,
Its interesting. I had my equipment on a metal framed wood shelved rack last year and when I'd ground myself on the rack I could hear popping noises through my speakers. No cables were touching the rack, sooo, the charge must have been going through the metal rack, transferring to the wooden shelves and entering my equipment through the equipments footers...?

Anyways.... I took care of my problem by not wearing my sweat pants (don't worry, I'm not naked, although, that might help lessen the interuptions...) not wearing socks and putting lotion on my feet so they aren't dry at all (can't believe I actually shared that, but oh well).

Last year I did spray an anti static spray on the carpet and cables but that would only work for about a half a day.

I think humidifier, less static buildup in clothes and socks (bare feet that aren't dry), thats they way to go.

What antistatic products are out there for our cables??