It is certainly way more painful than I expected, but I wanted to see to the end how viable the process was after installing the webcam on a fixed mounting point and if what I had already saved could be somehow salvaged. Regardless of the outcome, I think at least the test (and the previous one) was successful in showing what it takes and what problems could arise in the process.
By design the system is intended to allow an as high as possible current during transients (short circuits at the electrode assembly) within the limitations of the cabling and the power supply. During such transients the total resistance of the coil+electrodes can be as low as roughly 0.3 Ohm. A 0.1 Ohm resistor would affect this appreciably - I'd need a smaller coil to compensate. I haven't determined with certainty yet if the coil is strictly required (i.e. if it can be replaced with a resistor), but from a short test made during the 2018-12-14 session, placing a ferromagnetic core within it appeared to have a positive effect.
So far I've been testing with improvised (scavenged, even) equipment trying to lower costs as much as possible, but in part also in an attempt to prove (to myself at least) that there should be no need to invest a lot of money to observe appreciable results. It would seem odd within this context to spend almost nothing on the actual experiment, but hundreds on the measuring equipment.
I'm wondering if the bandwidth of a computer sound card (96/192 kHz) would be sufficient to properly work as an ultra-low cost oscilloscope here, once it is determined that the coil can be replaced with something else. The data could be stored as an audio wave file and be processed later on with software tools.