So my board works fine...on my test harness. In the synth proper, the level-shifter I selected (TXB0108) can't overcome the 10k pullup resistors on the synth main board itself. :(
I tried chip-swapping to an open-drain compliant TXS0108, but still no go.
I'm going to attempt to breadboard a solution with a '245 that is 5V tolerant and puts out a TTL compatible 3.3V high that *should* work for now, if that works I'll go to a real level-shifting chip for the prod run.