OP

Quoted from timlah79:

UPDATE 1/13 9:30AM: Short story (pun intended) - The root cause appears to have been a faulty socket from this UPPER LEFT G.I. area all along.
Long story (How I came to this conclusion):
I messed with a yet to be unsoldered socket (from the location circled below) after all the steps I outlined earlier. Each time I'm moving these wires/sockets BTW I have the machine powered off. Then if I've done a fair amount of movement I stop and power up just to see if the issues are still happening. I was about to unsolder this socket like the other 4 I but all of a sudden the issue had gone a away again. So I grabbed a bulb and popped it in. It lit up. However, I could now trigger the issue by removing the bulb, re-adding it, power cycles in between. So I at least had an intermittent ability to start/stop the issue with this socket! I inspected it yet again and saw nothing but was like this has to be it though. So I unsoldered it.
I have since started at this socket over and over again. Just now I decided to take a ton of pics of it to post here. As I was going through the pics on my computer, I saw the tiniest little copper wire inside the socket housing. I couldn't for the life of me see this with just my eyes and flashlight. The pic I took with a flash shows it clear as day (pic attached). This isn't supposed to be here, correct? Please tell me this isn't normal, I don't see such a thing in any other sockets. What's puzzling though is with the socket (and I hope this isn't a stupid question) is as it is right now, I don't get continuity across its arms. Should I if it is the root cause? If so I suppose it's possible that at this exact testing moment, the wire is not causing a short?
With 5 of the 9 sockets now unsoldered/disconnected, exposed wires electrical taped at the ends, then 4 of the 9 back in place with bulbs, I have played a few games. Issue has yet to resurface!
Irony here: I have never touched this socket/bulb before, it's always had a bulb in it, never disconnected until this issue, and is not one of the two used for those aforementioned mods. So how in the heck did this happen or has that wire been in there all along and I've just been lucky for 1.5 years?
Anyway let me know your guys' thoughts. I have some follow up questions about putting everything back together, but before I do that/ask I wanted to send this along. [quoted image][quoted image]