GROUNDING - assistance on how NOT to shock yourself

I use an Air Care whole house humidifier during the winter months due to my wife’s health concerns.  3 years ago, it cost $179.95 from Home Depot but may be more now.  The humidifier is in the kitchen and the stereo is 2 rooms away.  I get absolutely no static discharge anywhere in the house now.  You can set the humidifier for a various amount of humidity.  I found 55% to be just right. 

I have a strip of tin-coated copper bus-bar screwed to the wall beside my turntable.  It is connected to a 50K resistor, connected to ground (in this case, a copper cold-water pipe nearby).

The bus-bar doesn't make it more effective, but it's definitely a better look than a chunk of 14 AWG.  It doesn't eliminate the shock, but it makes it more bearable.

Back in the day, when I was managing audio and video studios, static electrical discharges were a serious problem. We discovered that mixing fabric softener with a bit of water and spraying the carpet around critical equipment alleviated the problem.

another Wisconsinite here and I can attest to the aridity. In my case, I simply touch the metal base of my "equipment lamp" that is next to the turntable before I lift the tonearm, for some reason this doesn't create the same "POP" and I don't feel any kind of static shock (possibly because I'm anticipating it v. getting surprised). While I do have a big area rug in the room, the equipment rack is on a bare wooden floor.

A lot of gear uses a "floating" ground (better called a neutral). With out knowing how your gear is wired, it is hard to say if using the grounding lug on your preamp is "safe." I would expect any decent phono preamp's TT ground lug to be "lifted" from earth to avoid common mode interference and not be connected directly to earth. Your amps should be fine with discharging the static, but a lot of gear leaves out important fail safes in order to keep the signal pure. That said, class A amps are pretty much immune to this type of abuse.
No idea about how a static pop might affect a cartridge.

If you are worried about it, you need the same hand that lifts the cartridge to be grounded. You can buy a grounding cord. It looks like a 3prong extension cord, but it only has the earth wire, and either an alligator clip or ring lug on the other end. Plug it into the same outlet that the TT is plugged into, pick up the lug to ground yourself, and move the TT arm while holding the lug. wintery dry hands also do not conduct as well as healthy moist skin, so a bit of lotion (or just lick your palm). It might have the bonus to bringing less dust onto the record as well.