Tore down and rebuild twice, still no joy 
Aside from the usual points in the trouble shooting thread, anyone have any suggestions?
Some details
OS - Windows 7 64 bit
USB - Serial: CP2012 USB FTDI board (made by BA/TE, USB 2.0 to UART TTL 6PIN Module Serial Converter)
ATMega328p (also have a PU, same issue)
bootloader - Uno. All of my chips (3 now) were burned by the seller with the Uno bootloader
Changed: AT chips, capacitors, crystal, all jumpers. Have not changed resistors, reset switch (though this works), pin headers, LEDs (these work too)
This is driving me mad, more so because my other Arduino boards work fine with this setup