Hello!
So, I mostly understood your comment. For background, I just graduated computer engineering, so I have some understanding of electrical hardware, but I'm far from advanced, and this is the first time I have ever done anything with audio.
I will set up a voltage divider when I get to the lab tomorrow to see if that's the issue. I don't really understand why the ground connection at the pot is important vs just having a resistor inline with the LM386, but I'd like to understand if you could point me to any resources. (It's possible I just forgot some circuit analysis basics from my classes a few years ago lol).
Also, I din't really understand what it means to over drive something into distortion. From your comment, it seems like it has something to do with setting gain so that the lm386 attempts to drive output above its power source voltage, but I don't really understand the consequences of that, or why/how it actually happens. Again, if you have any resources on why this causes distortion/what distortion actually is on a signal level, I'd love it, but totally understandable if its not really feasible for you.
Thanks for your help, I'll update tomorrow if setting up the voltage divider helps or no.