I just don't want to hack up my only remaining sled, nor do I want to deal with the task of wiring up all the connections on the wiring loom

Having done this myself, I have to say that if you've already got a docking sled, then use it. You do not have to "hack it up". All of the things I did are reversible. The serial and audio connectors use removable plugs. The docked ethernet and home power are on a separate board which screws into the hole in the back center of the sled. Look at my pics on the Riocar site closely and you can see.

The only thing I did to make the sled less-than-pristine was bend the tabs on the edge, but those can be bent back if need be.

See, the only reason that the docked ethernet and home-power work so well is that the sled fits the player so perfectly. It's carefully machined so that the player slides in exactly the same way every time. A home-made solution for this probably wouldn't dock perfectly every time. So your home-made connectors wouldn't necessarily dock each time, you'd have the player getting "stuck" on the way into the sled occasionally.