Static electricity Killin me.

"Usually you can hear the SQ improve as static goes away."

Of course you can.

It's not the equipment causing static electricity it's the path on the way to the equipment.

One other solution is to run a exposed ground wire to your cabinet and affix it where you can easily touch it each time your approach your system. That will eliminate any popping or ticking that may be heard through your speakers.
That is of course if the humidifier doesn't solve it. But I had that same issue years ago and just had a small copper wire at each front corner and just touched it before
I touched any button, knob, etc.

I touch a corner of drywall to ground me out. The drywall has metal corner bead and will ground it out. Its right next to the system so I dont have to move and create more static.
It was bad for a while, when I touched my Krell KRC2 it would send it into mute mode.
-John

I had lots of static as well and was afraid to touch any metal part of my equipment. I have lots of carpet and it didn't matter if I had shoes on or off. I sprayed areas with static guard which helped for a little while but then the static would be back in a couple of days. Once I started raising my cables off the carpet the static started to diminish but was not completely gone. I think what killed it completely for me was when I eliminated one dedicated line which I felt had a questionable ground. I just turned that breaker off and ran the audio through the other dedicated circuit. Eventually I will check the ground on the one breaker. I had a subwoofer plugged into that circuit which caused a hum. Now it is pretty rare if I get a static shock and if I do it is minimal. I also think static may attenuate the high frequencies and raising the cables off the carpet did help.

Wow, lots of responses! I've just started grounding myself on a heater vent next to my equipment. The culprit is the dry winter air here in colorado. It's pretty dry here. When I was young, my friend and I used to walk around in our socks, shuffling our feet on the carpet to build up electricity so that we could unexpectantly shock one another, usually on the nose or ear. Hurt like hell!

Sgr, thanks for the tip! I'll have to try that with my cables! I was never a believer in raising my cables off the floor but maybe it would be wise to look into that also!