My experience taught me, that once open, the pot has very short life span. Besides, my crimping might have done some damage to the strip coating and it could fail in a different way. So this pot goes into the scrap bin.

The pedal itself does not warrant an upgrade. I like the feel of it, the mechanical internals and the design. The pot is and will stay the weak link (no matter what the replacement). The only upgrade that would make sense would be to switch to a solid state device, but that would be an overkill.

That being said, there are two minor things I will change - use a keyed shaft pot (with a flat spot) and use proper set screw in the pinion instead of generic screw.

I have ordered a high durability cermet pots and a few carbon pots of a different design. Will try the cermet first, if that fails, will go back to the carbon.