ahhhh SUCCESS!
huge hugs 'n' kisses to Curiosity!
turns out that my capacitor/resistor combo had somehow killed itself. When I tried the 2nd pin from SyncMOS again it still didnt work. Luckily I had bought spare resistors and capacitors and I used 2 new ones and it works. Not too sure whether it was the capacitor that died or the resistor but i will hopefully find out when i tidy up my soldering a bit.