pots with W taper

I'm looking at a circuit from c. 1984 that contains a bunch of "W taper" pots. The pots are made by Alpha, and I see here

I need to replace these (old, noisy) pots. But unsurprisingly, no one seems to sell them, in small quantities. I'm wondering if I shouldn't just use a linear taper instead. Is anyone here familiar enough with 1980s-era audio design that they could tell me how noticeable the consequences would be? The pots are used in three applications:

1. Tone control: signal is split into four frequency bands, and then recombined by taking each band into the top of a 100k pot, pot bottom to ground, pot outputs into 62k resistors into the summing node of an inverting amp.

1. Blend control: like this, with 10k R's and 100k pot ___ ___ A -|___|-o-|___|-o--- To summing node | | .-. | .-->| | | | | | | GND '-' | ___ | ___ | B -|___|-o-|___|-'

2. Volume control: as the feedback element in an inverting amplifier.

I can do the math and calculate the theoretical difference in response between using linear and "W" taper in these applications, but even armed with numbers it's hard to know how it will be subjectively. Any help from someone who's actually given it a try would be appreciated! There must have been some reason why someone convinced Alpha to make this special taper...

Thanks, -walter