saruman

Check out the Voigtlander on Steven Gandy's site. For 800$, you have a Basse-R2, 50/1.5 or 35/1.7. The body is in M-mount like the leica's. The lenses are in m39 (leica thread mount) and need an adapter.

Mechanically speaking, the camera is similar to a Nikon FM10 but with a rangefinder instead of a prism. It does have an SLR shutter. So it's louder then the M6.

I only have a few gears. A canon canonet range finder (the not very attractive electronic everything version,) an early Canon digital camera (a 1999 model...) and a Nikon Nikkormat EL with a 50/1.4, 105/2.5 and a more recent 24/2 Ai.

In the darkroom, I lack a proper enlarger and timer.

I'm not much of a darkroom guy myself. I'll let someone else develop/proofsheet and may or may not rent time with an enlarger for prints. Being digitally spoiled doesn't help.
I'll definitely look into the Bessa further...I know of it, but haven't heard much excitement about it.
Today, I ran across a pretty deep site, that I think you'd enjoy (if you haven't seen it already): http://www.dantestella.com/technical.html