Hi Overlander & arch2b,
I suggest You to leave the resistor in the circuit. I don't know it exactly, but this resistor maybee a insurance for the IC.
So if the potentiometer is at the end of turning, normaly it have 0 Ohm.
If you put the battery voltage at the IC with a resistor of 0 Ohm, its possible to get some problems ;-).
So if you dissasemble the resisitor you should not turn the potentiometer at the end posistion.
It is no problem to replace this resistor in a SMD package resistor.
best regards
Thorsten
www.mikromodell.de