Three Volume/Mixer Questions

[LyleCaldwell]

I'm working on a circuit that would split an input to two stages (let's call them Leg A and Leg B), the second stage (Leg B) having a volume control. The signal is buffered low impedence when it comes to the input, so the splitting is not a concern, though I would prefer to use a passive splitter.

But I have three questions:

1)  If the volume is turned all the way down on Leg B using a passive volume control, will this mute the level of Leg A (I assume it would)?

2)  Leg B is currently going into a unity gain mixer, where the input resistor (R1) is 47K and the resistor doing the opamp gain (R2) is also 47K.  There are other inputs to this opamp and I don't want to change their volume, so I don't want to vary R2. To turn down the volume on Leg B within the opamp circuit, I would need a larger value pot to use as R1, correct?

3)  If I use a larger value on R1, say a 500K linear pot, at max that would give me a huge volume decrease, and as I turn the pot down, the gain would go up.  Am I right that I could just swap wires on the pot and get the gain to increase as the pot is turned clockwise?

I apologize for any inadvertent vagueness- this stuff is hard to put into words.