Nandric, Try it both ways and see what happens. The very worst that can happen is hum; no risk of damage to anything except maybe your speakers if the volume is turned up too high. I own a Triplanar which I converted to XLR jacks from RCA jacks. I connected the shield to pin1. (I presume you know that hot from the RCA jack goes to pin2 and ground from the RCA jack goes to pin3.) I did not connect the tonearm ground wire to anything. It just hangs in the breeze. There is no hum. I've been using it this way for several years and with two or three different cartridges. If you DO get hum, just revise the ground connections, and you are likely to defeat the problem.
Interestingly, I converted my RS-A1 tonearm to straight thru balanced connection, for use with my MP1. I eliminated the female RCAs at the base of the tonearm and ran about 3 feet of Cardas wire straight from the cartridge pins to the preamp with XLR jacks. Once again, I connected the shield to pin1, but in this case I did have a hum problem which was eliminated when I grounded the body of the RS-A1 to the MP1 chassis.