Another vote for repairing the cart. Where ever it ends up you will need to wait. I had a Koetsu RSP get its cantilever removed by the same mechanism. Peter Lederman at SoundSmith repaired it after a several month wait. It has been working great (and still sounding like a Koetsu) ever since.
Because of the wait, picking up a cheaper low internal resistance cartridge in the meantime makes sense. Have fun exploring something new.