Ok, got it open.





there's definitely plenty of dust and a bit of corrosion on the lower middle layer. definitely going to spray the whole thing down with some cleaner and let it soak (after spraying out the dust). BUT, i did get a good bit of info from my friend, which i did not know before. See how there are these connectors for the pre-to power?

He said that he used to be able to get the receiver to work if he shoved something in between those two to spread them apart. So I'm thinking 90% likely that there's either a bad solder joint, or corrosion on the contacts there. It's very hard to get to those solder points on the inside, so I'm banking on the fact that there's just a bit of corrosion on the contacts that's causing the issue.