i'm closing this track.
i couldn't get the output to null with the version from july, but i do not believe that the version from july was correct, either. it seems to be routed differently. it's very strange, too, as the time stamps suggest it's almost impossible for the output to be unreconstructible.
to be clear: everything nulled perfectly except a thirty second section of guitar. but, that guitar part is layered over 8 times in the cubase project so it's not as simple as just resetting an eq.
i would be tempted to think that i was getting layered over floating point or round-off errors on all the eqs (i think i'm getting that for another track), but the difference in sound is fairly dramatic - it's really more like it's routing differently.
the only thing i can really think of is that the july output was some kind of error. i may have temporarily placed a bus on those guitar tracks, or perhaps routed them directly to the master.
whatever it was, the reality is that version i have saved in cubase sounds much better and has been uploaded in replace of the previous version.
initially written in 1996. recreated in jan, 1998. reclaimed july 2, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on dec 26, 2015.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/sample-used-without-permission