Simply inserting one for the other will have noticeable sonic differences. Few audio manufacturers can afford a couple of hundred dollars in their bills of materials, and they actually don't need to. Penny and Giles are used in the recording industry on older analog consoles, rarely on hifi equipment. Instead, there are a number of lower cost alternatives that sound equally good.
At the heart of these volume controls is a simple resistor, stretched out and contacted with a tensioned piece of metal known as the "wiper". The wiper is what slides across the resistive element and picks off a part of the resistor. Here's what a pot looks like inside and how it works.
Looking at the diagram, A is where the original signal is placed. B is connected to ground. W (the wiper) is the output of the pot that feeds the next stage or even directly a power amplifier.
When you turn the volume knob on your system up and down, the wiper rubs against different sections of the resistor. Closer to one end of the resistive element (A) there is no resistance, thus we get full volume. At the opposite end (B) there is much resistance, and the volume is decreased until we get all the way to ground and there is zero.
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