I, also have lost all of the criteria of the two elongated strings of the “ Pot from Hades” , but have been up against the very same situation in the repair of an “ole” Zee-nuts sets chassis.

I see that you finally bent the captive tabs and disassembled the unit, for mechanical inspection.

It certainly must have received its share of wiper arm transitions to have eroded off the resistance element down to its current state of being 5 Meg end to end.

Initially the unit would have been in the order of 2 MEG unit with a 500k tap off point of that loudness compensation tap up from the lower volume levels portion (up from ground).

Soooo looks like you are up against finding a replacement with four criteria:

1…A 2 Meg resistance element…audio taper…and that’s…heavy on the AUDIO TAPER.

2…A tap 500 k up from ground

3…A power switch attached

4…A proper mechanical configuration …or can be altered

I did pull out some of my research info on pots that I had reconfigured into Excel Spreadsheet and punched in a call up of all of the 2 Meg units from the site that seems to offer the greatest available numbers of units.

The info is additionally color coded, with the marked qualifiers codes being:

MAGENTA…

Signifying the unit HAVING A SWITCH, albeit, with some of them incorporating the new generation push / pull type of switch, instead of the rotary on off action.

YELLOW…

Signifying that the unit is marked as an AUDIO taper unit.

GREEN…….

Being assumptive that these units are also going to be using an AUDIO taper element, what with the tap offs that are being shown, but with tap positioning value oriented towards other manufacturers designs.

After looking at the referencing it seems that you need a unit whose line data is both having a MAGENTA (Switch) and the YELLOW coding of being an audio taper unit, but additionally having the designated 500K compensation tap off.

None of those shown TOTALLY meet all of those criteria, along with the mechanical considerations to yet be confirmed, HOWEVER if up against the situation myself, my choice would be initially to select between units with a switch, along with having compensation taps on their elements:

1503-950

1487-568

1503-894

1503-985


The next option would be to select among the audio designated units with compensation taps.

1502-022

1502-020

1487-472

1487-165

1487-045

1487-627

In both of the above situations, I know that I can epoxy fuse on an elemental, arc conforming out board Bakelite sheet with its miniature terminal lug micro riveted to it with that added board mounted at the side of the element and then the use of a micro trail of kine aquadag coating, to make electro conductive coupling into the resistive element at the 500k side point.


My last option would be the use of any of the myriads of GREEN marked up units, as they all have taps, but merely need the procedure I mentioned just above to get tied into the 500k portion.


The last aspect that you are wondering about now is the switch as in …de switch.. Boss…DE SWITCH……a la Tattoo.


The last time I was up against that, I mounted a ¼ in collar at the chassis front of the volume control , closest to the chassis, it had affixed (tapped) onto it, a 1¼ in Bakelite disc that was built from ¼ in thick stock . At the discs outer periphery, there was a half round gap that had a slight tapered incline on one of its sides.

A bracket mounted a Microswitch (10 amps…babycakes ! …overkill) switch and that switch's mechanical configuration had an activator tip that normally rested down with in that cavity area when the set had its volume control shaft rotated to its CCW off position. Slight CW rotation engaged the switch and it then stayed on for all of the volume settings, until eventually returned to the MAX CCW off position.


Thassit

Referencing: