Willing to be proved wrong.

I agree with Sdcampell, and since you're not going to spend anything on a new TT now - and since your TT won't justify a pricey cart - if I were you, I would probably take this cost-savings as an opportunity to not totally cheap out on the phono preamp while you're having to get one, just in case you get hooked and want to go for a better TT/cart later on (and somehow, I doubt this will take very long - but if you don't get hooked, who's gonna want to buy a used RS unit?). If you get one of the inexpensive Grado Prestige carts, you might look into their own battery-powered phonostage (presumably optimized for Grado MI carts, but should also work well with Shure's high-output MM's), which is not terrribly expensive, and should still do a good job for you if you move up to one of their wood-bodied models in the future. But if you decide not to go the battery route, Mikey Fremer seemed to like the Gram Amp the best of the inexpensive phonostages he's rated recently.

Though I don't anything about the Stanton model mentioned in particular, I would be wary of buying any phono cart from a guitar chain store. The models these stores carry are usually intended to be used for "scratching" by hip-hoppers, or for portable TT rigs that are slip-cued by DJ's under party and club conditions, and as such are built much more heavily than is optimal for home high fidelity listening.

Elmuncy, noise reduction processing is generally only used for transcription purposes of material old enough not feature a full frequency range, and rare enough and in bad enough shape for the inevitable trade-offs not to outweigh the benefits. (Although these days, most such processing is done in the digital domain.) Audiophiles don't use "de-clickers" for ordinary listening, and you won't need it for records in good shape. If your vinyl is in bad enough shape that cleaning it won't make it listenable to you (not only due to dirty surfaces, but maybe to being played on a poorly tracking cart/arm for many years, or improper handling or storage), then you will probably only be content with newly bought records. But you might also view not being able to happily listen to your existing collection as an end to your reason for wanting to get back into vinyl in the first place. Records can be fantastic, but only you can judge whether your records can be that for you.

Dekay, you're definitely a man after my own heart!

I own a Technics SL-1200, and while I like it fine and it might well be better than what you've got now, I'm not going to tell you that you should get one. But I will say that you can probably do a lot better, for not a lot of money, than getting involved with the majority of old TT's such as the ones you mention. There are decent new options out there for audiophiles, without having to go down a disappointing or excessively mod'n'tweaky path of trying to restore an old machine and reduce its inherent flaws. It won't be worth what might initially seem like the savings you think it, and most of these tables are inferior to what you could get in a nice new, clean, moderately-priced TT today.