and there were some switchable digimods/ but i don't remember a switchable digimod that was also an oade or busman mod ect.. I may be wrong on that one though... I forgot about the trs being disabled also...And for mics that are terminated with trs, can't you simply use an adapter? Or better yet, teac and nak mics that can be modded to run p48 by a few people on this board now rather cheaply..
I loved my busman UA5 when i had it, but the lack of monitoring, made something like svu2 (beachtek??) a necessity for me, and with so many cheap all in ones on the market, i ended up getting a busman modded marantz pmd 660, one of which i still own, which IMO sounded better, was far less gear to tote around, and for $300 dollar price tag nowadays, i find a much better, more versatile investment. to each his own. the marantz only has xlr inputs though also. But i'd def. post in the YS if thats the route you want to take and you'll find a great price on a modded UA5 fairly easily i'd imagine.
Good Luck