I get the initial sketches thing, but incorporating the 'wrong' instruments is a bit of a non-starter imho!
And I think its a shame the contest was opened up on a different site and not offered to the members who actually use this one....
I love the idea of community members submitting designs! Please, if you have one in mind, go ahead and share it.
FWIW, the main reason I started the design is because 99designs is probably the most affordable way to access a large body of designers, and you can direct and guide their work. So we, as a community, can aggregate our feedback, provide it to the designers whose work we like the most, and shape the logo the way we want it. It requires some imagination and a few iterations, but usually the end product is very good. In addition, the designers will also usually generate 10-20 files meeting various technical requirements (transparent background, white background, inverted colors, favicon for your website, etc.), which is nice. Finally, at the end of the project, the designers transfer all copyright to the client (tMP in this case).
BTW, I thought about starting a poll first to see if folks even wanted to change the logo at all, but I thought that it would be easier to make a decision with some candidates to consider, so I went ahead with getting some starting designs from 99designs so we could picture some alternatives, knowing I would have to eat the cost of if the community didn't like any of them.
Hope that's helpful!