Ok, I wanted to continue this just in case someone runs into a similar problem in the future.
This is more of a general fix and not just associated with the GE_5268.
I did a repair on the original pot like I planned to but wasn't really sure if it would work and this isn't a box that you can easily test things out on as far as pots so I wanted a solution that I was a little more confident in.
Thankfully, I was in contact with Caution and he pointed me in the right direction.
I decided to buy a 50K pot with 6 pins and condense it down to 5 pins like the original pot had.
I wanted a style similar to the original with threads so I could bolt it onto the chassis.
Luckily, I found some at Mouser and bought 3 of them just in case I had any problems.
After receiving them and opening one up, I verified that I could tie pins 2 & 3 together and they would act like pin 2 on the original pot leaving me with 5 total pins.
I bent the pins down and was able to get them to reach through the board with about 1/16" to solder.
I also realized that the original pot housing was grounded through it's bracket so I soldered two wires onto the bracket of the new pot for grounding.
Here's a shot of the inside of the new pot.
Here's the old pot, new pot and another of the new pots on the bottom.
I had to cut the shaft down and lengthen the flat part to allow the knob to slide on correctly.
Here, I'm comparing the old and new pins.
You can see how I had to bend the pins to go through the board.
These are the two ground wires I soldered on.
Here's a shot of it soldered on the board.
The 4 blue caps are new, I replaced the old ones just because they were in the volume pot path.
Finally, this is after I threaded the tuner cord back on so you can see it in relation to the other pots.
Happily, I can say this is back together and working great.
Here's a picture of the final product.
