OK, being the genius I am, I hooked up a 6 volt EL-wire driver to 12 volts (to see what would happen)
and it went poof
and I kinda need it...

I'm hoping the thing that fried was the transistor, which is marked
"SSX550
D 331"
I can't seem to find replacements

also, does anyone know any simple EL wire driver circuits, in case it's the IC that's fried and I can't fix it and need to build one?
(probably the case but the transistor is worth a shot)

 

Is it possibly a 2SD331?

 

I'm not sure, but it's the only thing I've seen that makes close to sense. I'll replace it with something similar and see, thanks