Well-off saying little about California's shock measure? (7,5)
I believe the answer is:
richter scale
'measure?' is the definition.
(I know that Richter scale is a type of graduated table)
'well-off saying little about california's' is the wordplay.
'well-off' becomes 'rich' (similar in meaning).
'saying little' becomes 'terse' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'california' becomes 'cal' (short for California).
'terse' going around 'cal' is 'terscale'.
'rich'+'terscale'='RICHTER SCALE'
'shock' is the link.
This may not be correct. It may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for richter scale that I've seen before include "On which earthquakes are measured" , "On which an earthquake is measured" , "Measure of energy released by earthquakes" , "Measure of earthquake strength" , "Measure of quake magnitude" .)