Well, well, well--I fixed it. Man, what an ordeal. Those knobs do indeed just pull off, but not without a great deal of effort, and possibly have to be turned to a certain setting. I'm not sure about that. But I finally got the big circuit board out, although I tore off a couple of resistors underneath, because I disassembled it wrong. But after re-soldering them, I proceeded to find out why the variable sweep vernier was just going round and round. It has a long shaft that joins the pot with a collar with set screws in it. The set screws are 180 degrees apart, and somebody tightened one too far and the other was sticking out enough to get hung on the little shroud that encircles it. So I corrected that, and the variable sweep knob worked correctly.
So I re-installed the circuit board, and buttoned the machine up, and it's sitting over here working pretty as you please. Thanks guys.