On the (tripod) legs of the Mounting, Mounting Mountain Dilemma

To buy or not to buy, a replacement mount ? that is the question. Oh what to do. Mini EQ1, EQ2, EQ3/2, AZ3, Supatrak, Acuter Merlin, HEQ5, EQ6, CG4, Vixen GP, Witty One, HECQGE9.25764 Arrghhhh!. It's giving me bad dreams. I can hear the click, clickclick of the tripod feet chasing me down the street, they are all the same, yet all so different. Do I live with what I have at the moment, and suffer from not being able to track anything, and having to coax and jiggle the photo tripod head to get the scope to point where I want it to, on the grounds that I'm going to get a bucket of light collection (well nearly) at some point in the not too distant future, and get a mount with that ? Do I buy something and try and make it fit on the top of my camera tripod so that I can use that to track ? Do I just buy a full blown Astro mount and tripod ? New, second hand, old, borrowed, blue (hang on I did that some time back and it has nothing to do with Astronomy!!!).

I'm having nearly as much trouble with this as I was having before Christmas deciding what to invest my money in for a scope (until my other half found the Konus at half price and decided something had to be done).

I don't want to spend money buying something like the mini eq1 mount at full or near full price just to find that I can't easily mount it on top of my camera tripod, and it has to end up in the hands of Mr Hatchet and Bodge It to make it fit (I'll end up messing up badly and tossing the entire thing in the bin as my DIY skills are at best rubbish). As I'm intending to invest in a bigger scope, Newt of some sort, (possibly Dob maybe EQ mount), I don't really want to spend lots of money on a bigger mount (not that the CFO would approve anyway) when I haven't fully decided on what to go for, and any mount I bought now might not be man enough for the job. The Merlin Acuter mount would handle both my scope and my camera (although not at the same time) but isn't that cheap. There is a Supatrak mount available second hand for less, but I don't think I could mount my camera on it, and the scope would need to have money spent on it to fit it with a dovetail attachment of some sort (I think) so probably wouldn't be any cheaper. There's an AZ3 available also, about half price, but I think I'm back into the realms of having to buy more for the scope to get it on there, and I'm not sure the camera would fit. Or, I could buy a Nextar 60SLT from fleabay (if I can find one cheap enough), dispose of, in some way the 60mm scope that comes with it, and mount my Konus instead. I think this will also involve some improvement purchases to my current scope.

Ah well, Lets see what today brings, apart from, dare I say it, what looks like good weather ...