123brummer - thanks for this detailed reply. my soldering skills are lacking, but i can certainly give the cleaning a go in hopes of avoiding the switch replacement. glad to know it solved your issues, so that's promising, i find actually the footswitches that are troublesome are the very ones that get used the most, so we'll see - it could be they're worn out. R3fx.com charges $100 for complete replacement with sturdier (or at least heftiier parts) for $100 so that's really not a lot considering.