Some things are and remain a mystery after a major connector "disturbance" - in your case repacing a board then swapping back. Possibly a shot of contact cleaner would have fixed the volume problem in the original pot. The reverse pot is just the way possibly the Xpin wired their board, that was a simple fix. I understand your frustration though, I want to understand why something was fixed more than, that it was fixed.
On a side note. I click on location sometimes on a pinsider. Christiana Lake. Pretty nice.