Mylar tape on Teres has lots of static.

Richard,

Don't you understand ANYTHING about sub-atomic physics? ;-)

The non-conductivity of your shoes and carpet is WHY you get a big discharge when you finally touch a grounded object. If you were grounded at every step there'd be no buildup of a large potential between you and earth.

Artemus,

Here's a link to the etched tape thread .

Doug,

Nope - I rely purely on faith ;-)
There is a great need for a sarcasm font, BTW.

My only ground path is off the Triplanar's base. Personally, I never understood why one would want to ground the main bearing, but perhaps in certain schemes it could provide benefits - I always look at more ground wiring as an open path for RF/EMI, etc. Considering everything is conductive on a Galibier (except the platter and the belt), another ground point would be redundant. I am rarely plagued by belt static, even during the winter it isn't too bad, but then again, I usually remove the belt every week or so to clean it and the platter edge, so perhaps I've never had a problem due to my normal regimen - usually I see more charge differential between myself and other objects during the dry time of the year, which is why I always touch the plinth first, THEN the arm...zzZZAP!

-Richard



-Richard

Thom is correct, grounding the bearing will help. The motor housing is grounded and grounding the platter puts both at the same potential.

Richard,
Agree we should all routinely ground ourselves at the tonearm base whenever we approach the table. A surprise zzZZZAP! near the armwand or cartridge could produce a costly involuntary jerk (and yes, that's just what Paul calls me!).

Hi Chris,
FWIW, grounding our bearing has little effect on static buildup on the belt we use. I attribute this to the non-conductivity of our platter, belt and motor capstan, which electrically isolates the belt from paths to ground. YMMV with other materials.

As mentioned, reducing static on this belt actually impairs its performance, so it's not a goal worth pursuing. Better just to keep it dust-free, as Dan_Ed and Palasr described. Again, YMMV with other materials.

Doug, with acrylic platters grounding the platter makes a big difference. With the wood platters it does not matter as much. I think that the reason is simply that wood builds up a lot less static. But even in the case of a wood platter grounding the bearing helps reduce static.