well, finally figured this one out, for some reason the target itself was at fault, ground lug not transferring to the grounding leafs of the target - i know not why nor do i question, i only fix or die
with a medium sized course file i clean a side of the leaf switch stack til it shines, then flow a generous amount of fresh solder to bridge all of the grounding leaves together
switch now works as it should
now to figure out why the ball count stepper relay occasionally wants to bounce (yes it bounces during reset) from the ball 1 position to the ball 2 position at game start - is it the tension spring or a dirty switch some how causing this ???
then i be done with this damn eager beaver