Apparently not, went ahead and formatted. Downgrade success from first try after that. Its silly really, hope some of the devs could figure our soft bricking causes when they got the time.
I've been holding off on formatting hoping that something comes up too. I'm positive that a solution could be found but I'm not so sure there's much interest in developing one.

Just tried that out, sadly didnt work for meTry backing up ur sd card and formatting it with this http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm then restore ur backup and try to downgrade again. You won't lose anything. Buddy of mine was having a soft brick issue and that fixed it for him. Not sure why it helped as it was a fresh out the box 3ds using the card that came with it.

damn, was worth a shot. i still dont get why it worked for him. if it had been a 3ds with a bunch of stuff on it and a diff sd card i could understand but it was fresh from the box.Just tried that out, sadly didnt work for me

