Hi,
So, I resolved the issue and the Crack is back to working and sounding excellent as it was. My apologies for taking so long on this and thanks for the support along the way.
Yesterday, I reinspected all connections and resoldered any connection that looked remotely suspicious. In particular, I removed all the solder from my potentiometer (from all lugs) and started from scratch. At this point, I think what contributed to the issues in this long thread is poor soldering of the potentiometer. It is a good learning because when I looked at the soldering prior to this, it looked fine to me but clearly there was still some issue.
Still got a question though - The crack sounds good.
However, when I measure the resistance from 12U to the Middle of Red RCA Plug is about 96.5kohm.
The same value for the White RCA Plug is about 92.5 kohm.
They are a bit different - is that ok or does that mean the potentiometer is slightly damaged from all this resoldering? Sonically, I cannot tell.
Thanks.