Hi,
As far as I know there's no design / build reason why the 48V shouldn't be there, but there's always a chance that the card's been modified later. Or the resistor's burned out, or the cap's gone s/c, or, or, or etc.... Fortunately should be a very easy fix!
On your second point, good point. IF it's a properly balanced feed it may not be an issue, if it's an unbalanced feed you're right it's not going to be too good for the feeding equipment - when the 651 was designed it was never dreamed that someone would do that! So you may find that somebody has removed R12 (or cut the link from pin 45 to 24 and 39 on the 651 backplane if I've got that right?) for exactly that reason.
I guess you possibly could rewire the listen cut switches (pull on the pot) as listen 48V on/off switches???
Good luck!
Andy