My BF fail saga continues:
I fiddled with the centerpin a bit more and got the empty Cyclone reading close to a half ohm.
So I dug up my gunsmithing screwdriver set. One of the tips fit the slot in the center pin perfectly. I clamped the atty upside down in a bench vise and started unscrewing. This took quite a bit of force at the beginning but eventually loosened up. I kept at it and after a while, I was able to get the center pin assembly out.
Inspecting it under a lighted 2x and 5x magnifier revealed no obvious source for the short, so I put it back together -- and got the same results as before, now about 0.44 ohms. The only plausible explanation I can came up with is that there's a piece of something conductive embedded in that insulator. That means I have to find something that's the right size with which to drift out that insulator.
Oh, and a rant/digression: The atty tester I picked up... The ON/OFF switch will not budge from the ON position. But since I bought it locally, I'm confident they'll swap it out for one that works as it should. Still, this seems like yet another sign that I should put #0002 in away in the safe for a while.