I'm keeping up my end just because I am bored (like most of us a prisoner in my own house), and it's fun. Plus one of my two audio systems is down and that depresses me. If you arrive at the turntable all charged up with negative electrons (or ions, as some would say), then as soon as you touch the LP, the charge on you will flow to it, owing I guess to the fact that skin wants to give off negative charge, and vinyl loves it. No rubbing needed. There is also the issue of removing the LP from its sleeve which also could charge it up. And the LP rotating in air on the platter is another possible source based on the relative positions of air and vinyl in the triboelectric series. In the actual situation, the interactions are complex enough that one can almost never say the LP is neutral just using empiric reasoning. Shure found that when they neutralized charge on the playing surface, that did nothing to the charge that might have existed between the LP and the platter mat, on the other side of the neutralized surface. As soon as the LP was lifted off the mat, the charge on the reverse side redistributed itself to cover both sides. By the way, I don't think conductivity has much to do with it, since this is, after all, "static" electricity, and we see that the materials on the extreme ends of the Triboelectric table, those with the most vs the least tendency to shed electrons or negative ions, are in general not very conductive or not at all conductive of electric current.
You are entitled to your opinions about the Linn LP12 and about use of the dust cover and the horrors of dust, but you are not entitled to facts. I am not sure of the facts, but I am interested to learn more without reverting to long held "beliefs" based on nothing discernible. Or you could quote your sources.
