[TinCanAlley]

Well it went better than expected. I looked into an empty socket and saw it was tapered and looked into one with a leg and I saw no visible solder like the buckets on the chassis. So I decided to give it a shot.

I am certainly not the first person to mess with this pot. I think it had a different pot to begin with and someone replaced it. Why they soldered the retaining ears is beyond me as I didn't have to on the replacement.

Here's how I did it. I bent the retaining ears so it wouldn't interfere with removal. I then grabbed one leg with the smallest needle nose I could find so as not to act as a heatsink. I pulled on the leg as I held my iron with the biggest tip I have to the other side of the socket.and within 10 second, the leg came out. I did the same to the other leg and the pot was out. I realized after moving the wire that there was no center leg. I then placed the new pot into position, lined up the retaining ears the the opening in the board, heated the tip of one well and the leg slipped in. I did the same for the other leg. I measured everything and the pot goes from just over 1ohm to over 85ohms.

Whoever replaced it last time made it much harder this time. I wanted to test the removed pot, but it was disintegrating in my hand. So much plastic had dried out and crumbled I just tossed it.