The cooler weather and lower humidity this time of year makes it a lot worse. The first thing I did when I bought a table was to get rid of the felt mat.

I haven't had to use any static control as we rarely need to run the heater down where I live. What little problem I had was cleared up by ditching the felt.

You might check out the needle doctor site for static control. Michael Fremer's site might have some advice as well.

The Zerostat Antistatic Gun is now made by a company called Milty. It retails for around a hundred dollars and can be found at most of the online retailers like Music Direct, Audio Advisor, Acoustic Sounds, and Needle Doctor. Links:

http://www.musicdirect.com/product/73947
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=ZESTAT
http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_detail.cfm?Title_ID=10413
http://www.needledoctor.com/Milty-Zerostat-Gun?category=480

It's also a good idea to keep the humidity in the room on the high side, and of course, make sure the turntable is properly grounded.

Buy - and use - a vacuum record cleaner and some decent inner liners. And the ZeroStat only if you still have a problem with pops and snaps.

Hi Jan! I use my Zerostat even after cleaning with my VPI machine. Wet cleaning with the VPI gets rid of some of the static, especially if there was a lot in the first place, but some still remains. Sometimes I can feel it if I pass the back of my fingers very close to the surface. Do you use a fluid with antistatic properties?

No, I use a DIY solution with distilled water and a few drops of a liquid detergent (All Free without dyes or perfumes) per cup of water. A bit of Everclear if the disc is very dirty with smoke residue or some other gunk the water/detergent can't clean. And a distilled water rinse. My vacuum system is the Disc Doctor machine.

I thoroughly saturate the disc's playing surface with solution and rinse water and do a good bi-directional cleaning with a VPI brush and a microfiber towel for the rinse. People I know seem to have more noise when they just run a line of cleaner across the disc and try to spread it around the entire disc. Since my cleaning solution costs a few pennies per disc I can afford to be very generous with its application.

Each situation is different but I don't have a problem with static or pops and snaps after cleaning.