Short in my system?

Your brush will only work if  it is grounded at the time you touch it. 

Hopefully you don’t live in an apartment sitting directly atop a power station??

I have pretty bad static in the winter when my furnace is running. I have a whole house house humidifier, but still have static discharge. A couple of weeks ago I had a particularly loud static discharge when I touched the lifter on my tonearm. There was a huge POP that came through my speakers, followed by a really loud hummm. Well, it took out the left channel in my Schiit Audio Mani 2 phono pre-amp.

So, here's the question: What is the best way to create a ground wire that I can grab/rub before touching any of the components in my system? I think I read in the past that the center screw hole in the cover plate of a duplex outlet was connected to ground. Is this correct? Can I just connect a wire to the center screw of one of the outlets connected to my system? If not, can I connect a wire to either ground lug on my turntable or phono pre-amp and just rub my fingers on the wire before touching one of the components in my system?

Search on amazon for “grounding plug with grounding strap” and you will find a three prong plug that can be plugged into an outlet and a grounding strap connected to it. 

Assuming that the floor is carpeted, you can make a spray using a fabric softener (1 to 5 dilution) and spray it on the carpet and let dry.  There are also commercial product anti-static sprays available as well.  You can search Amazon for them. That should help.

I would avoid using the ground lug on any of your equipment to disipate the static charge.  In most cases, it is no different than touching the face plate, etc.  (and you definitely don't want to send a high voltage static charge into you cartridge.) 

And logic tells me using the same grounding path of a AC outlet would be potentially dangerous.  The ground wire at the outlet is there for safety incase there is a fault or short at the outlet.