well.......i'm a little happier now anyway.

Some poor quality soldering in the faceplate was causing the fault, the red box on the left was particularly bad, all the solder joints had snapped where the ribbon doesn't sit against the board very well (pen used a yardstick so you can see how small the solder joints were )



there was also another set of joints the same as the box on the right that needed soldering, just not pictured

VOILA!!!!!!!