Finally broke down and forked out $20 for a new tuning pot for the MEII. Once I removed the old one and compared the play with the new one could not see a big difference. But the new one does tune quite a bit sharper. Dirt, age, whatever, wish they had something like that for my brain.
Oh yeah, the mod I made for it a while back, it does work but the cheap signal generator I used was, well, cheap. Wrong voltage, too. So now I got it back to the original configuration with new IC and precision pot. I can live with it, now.