Everton, I swear this thread has me gripped.
Yes, I also was enthralled by the sheer attention to detail and quality of all the gubbins..and to be sure, hanging onto the stock pups = ohyeah.
I've reread your posts here and am intrigued: if I've got this right, the "normal" pots you mention are more of a signifier of age, than of whether it is a 1500, 2000, etc; in other words, the push-push pots were put on as part of Yamaha's desire to distance themselves from Gibson.
To clarify(I hope): as Gibson took Yamaha on about the "SG" nomenclature, Yam started a few mods so as to increase the sense of differentiation(as if the quality of the Yams wasn't enough): thus, the 1976 SG2000's bits were superseded around '79 by the addition of push-push pots.
Therefore, if one has a low serial numbered babby with untapped(normal, non-pushy) pots, chances are that it's maybe between 76 and 79. At least for a 2000. Yamaha did so many refinements and changes to both it and its predecessors(the 2000 was "merely" an outworking of the earlier 150...er, ..1974??) that it can get very confused.
[Ev, I'm asking the obvious here buddy,.... the neck is a bolt-on, yes?]
Me and my fevered mind; apologies for drifting OT all