Hi Chunky,
interestingly, I was in the same situation as you a while back. I had a lovely new ultrawedge sitting in my shed for about a year. My fear of finding sigma octantis from the suburbs, polar aligning in general etc held me back, so I continued on in Alt/Az mode for far too long. I even considered a field de-rotator rather than using my wedge.
I finally decided to give the wedge a shot, and much to my surprise, have never looked back. I agree that damping times on a wedge could be much better. Given that you're in an obsie, factors like breezes etc should be less of a problem. If you keep your cable management spot on, you can minimise any problems there too.
I also think that the wedge, straight out of the box, is far from being smooth. I greased mine up and it made a huge difference. There are a few pages out there written by people who have done various things to their meade ultrawedges to improve their performance.
I say - give it a go. What have you got to lose? Ask a friend to help you get your scope mounted up on the wedge. A 12" is too heavy for one person to mount comfortably.
I used the plum bob at solar noon method to mark true south on my observing platform and it was spot on. If I wheel my 10" LX200GPS out and align it on my North South line, I get Sigma Octantis in the finder every single time. Even in the suburbs, you'll very quickly get the hang of finding sigma. It's not hard at all.
I used these two links as my
How To for polar aligning on a wedge. It made the whole process simple and straight forward.
Link 1
Link 2
Take a read of both links - they're good value.
Dean