It sounds like an intermittent short or open circuit to me. 45 degrees represents 1/2 of the total range of the gimbal as far as I know and if it is controlled by a 4 bit or 8 bit parallel signal (not uncharacteristic of ribbon cable), the first wire will represent 50% of the control signal (e.g., 0000=0%, 1000=50%, 1111=100%). In other words it takes only one wire to fail to cause the 45% change. Having said this, I have no idea what the electrical schematic looks like so this is a very speculative guess.
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As an afterthought, what I described above could be just a cocked connector. One end of the connector is going to come "open" first if the connector is cocked at its mating half. That's only one possibility, but it's a fairly easy condition to check for.
Good luck,