"pot".. short for potentiometer. Those are the volume/tone controls on your bass. They are variable resistors. Sometimes they get dirty and make scratchy noises when you turn them and need cleaning or replacing. Sometimes they seem to last forever.
Did you mean "intonation"? For what you're probably referring to, that's keeping a string in proper tune all the way up the scale of the neck. You want the open string note to be in tune with the 12th fret note on the same string. This is done by adjusting the speaking length of the string at the bass bridge.
Here's some info that can describe it better than I can right now.
http://www.petersontuners.com/news/t...m?this_topic=3
As far as learning setups, there's tons of info right here at this site, starting at the top of this page. Read the Gary Willis info. It's good stuff.
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