[kazinator]

If all you need to do is replace a potentiometer with electronic control, it may be possible to do that with a vactrol. It's more invasive perhaps, but then we're not dealing with anything mechanical.

A vactrol is a device which combines LED and photoresistor in one package (sealed against the leakage of light).

The photoresistor has a "dark resistance" that is typically very high, like hundreds of thousands of ohms. When it is illuminated by the LED, the resistance goes down: you control how much via the current to the LED.

Another possibility is using a digital potentiometer, like this: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/20005207B.p...

A digital pot is an integrated circuit that switches a bank of resistors with FETs to create a desired resistance, or combination of resistances to simulate a wiper position along an analog pot's track.

They are programmed with I2C and such.

These things have certain disadvantages; like the one I linked to requires that power rails be provided for the analog domain where the resistors "live", and the voltages on them must be within this range. The vactrol has no such issue; it is a passive resistor with light shining on it.