Just wanted to close the book on this in case anyone is interested. I swapped the pot with a Pec 100K ohm. This did require very minor drilling in the chassis plate to widen both the hole for the pot and the orientation tab. There is a lot of room around the terminals of this pot which made the job very smooth. I re-completed the original planned mod with the resistors to pad the pot. Everything works and sounds great. Thanks for everyone's help with this.