OK, so here's what I'm going to do . . .
First of all, thank you so much for your replies to my questions! You all helped me to see that MC at the price point I was considering would have been a step down from the Clearaudio/Soundsmith. And I learned that when I do decide to test the MC waters, I will have to pay special attention to impedance/load matching with my amp. Thanks!
So . . . I'm going to suffer the wait and send the cart to Mr. Lederman for a second rebuild with the ruby cantelever. I'm not even going to get a cart to use in the meantime; I have a very satisfying music server (Squeezebox Touch/W4S DAC1) with nearly 2 TB of lossless/Hi Res music, so I'm not exactly suffering! And just imagine the joy my vinyl will bring when the rebuilt cartridge finally comes!
Last question: Does anyone know of a stylus guard that could be snapped on when I'm not playing records so this doesn't happen again?