OK Good news and bad news, and sorry to be a bit late with it.
The hihat definitely was screwed up, and ended up shorting and frying to V3 board (At least I think that's what happened? That's what I was able to gather)
I went one night to find the DMV3 powered down, ended up going the next day to play GF. While I was there, the man who as far as I could tell was in charge of all of the bemani at the very least was working on the machine. I talked with him for a while and he seems like a very cool guy. Told me the only reason they didn't have the V cabs working for so long was because it actually took him that long to manage to replace the components that had been stolen. He also mentioned he had intended to upgrade to V4 or V5 before he found out that the V cabinets would only go to V3.
Anyway, he spent a while fixing the hihat, and did some work on the snare as well. I got the privilege of testing the machine, and everything felt considerably better. No real issues on the hihat at all. The snare you still have to hit a little harder than you should, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was before.
Regarding the toasted V3 board, it is apparently being sent out to be repaired and WILL BE BACK. For the time being the dm cab is running V again. A little annoyed that I can't play Sekai wa Sore wo Ai to Yobundaze anymore
But hey, V is kind of a trip down memory lane at this point.
So yeah. The guy I talked to seemed very into working with the machines. Kept saying that he really liked having stuff running and helping out the community, doing it for the people that really cared about the games. He also complimented me on my playing after I passed Purple Storm :P