The sound you describe as static like can be caused a number of different ways and goes by a number of different names depending on what exactly is going on. Sorry but you just kind of have to experience it a whole hell of a lot on a lot of different records to get the feel for what is what and which is which. Once you do it is very easy to talk about. Problem is most don't have that same experience, don't use the same terminology, and so people wind up talking past each other.
Sound familiar?
One of the most common ones is sibilance. That is when vocals, for some reason especially female but doesn't matter, and can be some instruments too, but certain sounds get the ssss exaggerated and splattered and sounds like static. A lot of people blame this on dirty or beat up old records but really it can be on brand new perfectly clean ones. So really what we are talking about is a bad pressing. For proof I have several copies all nice and clean all the same shape but one has massive sibilance the other hardly any. It's the pressing.
Another cause of this static sound is mis-tracking. The stylus never traces the groove the way we think. It mostly bounces back and forth sampling the groove. Go watch Peter Ledermann's terrific video on jitter where he explains this in detail. Fascinating stuff. Anyway, this tends to be worse with high amplitude and certain sounds excite harmonic resonance in the cartridge/arm system and so you can get this same sort of sound from breakup when this happens. If this is what it is you can try and tweak VTF, anti-skate (if it is more one channel than the other) and record mats or clamps. But these are all work-arounds, the real solution to this variety of breakup is a better arm/cartridge.
This can also simply be caused by a dirty record. Doesn't take much dust to encourage the stylus to bounce around and if you are tracking dirt it is gonna sound like it. Walker Enzyme 4 step cleaning is the best you can do. No one ever regretted cleaning their records, not that I know of.
But honestly my money is on the first one. Whole lot of records do this, it is just the nature of the beast. Most of the time it is the pressing, and not much if anything can be done but to find another pressing. The best ones are found at better-records.com but even those can still have this same problem. Nobody likes hearing this but it's true. Playing records is a trade-off. You can have awesome great sound- just not all the time.
