Bit wish wrote:the ones kitsch got me were kinda cheap.
(you actually get pretty good quality hookup wire from us. unnecessarily good. alpha or amphenol is all we've used in kits so far)
a break in the wiring wouldn't cause all these problem you're having. if your batteries blew up thats way beyond a broken wire in a prosound mod
are you absolutely positive you haven't created a solder bridge somewhere during your modding? its not a hard thing to do and could account for your issues.
go back and triple/quadruple check your work, and make sure your solder points are touching ONLY the one spot they are supposed to be touching. this is so often the cause of bad console behavior... that and bad capacitors
edit -- just speculating, but since the volume wheel is giving you such issues now, is it possible in the course of doing the mod that you heated the thumbwheel up too much when soldering the wires there, and possibly burned it out? just in the way they are constructed, i could imagine a bit of heat would fuze the tracks inside. just a guess, totally a shot in the dark.