Can you explain in more mathematical way? I just feel lost between the words.
You need to understand the circuit operation before you can do any maths, otherwise the math is irrelevant or incorrect.
eg. Shunting the 120K in the original circuit can only over
lower the effective value and
increase the circuit gain.
However you calculated for a
decrease in gain - which means making the 120K (or whatever replaces it) higher in value, in proportion to the 300K position.
That can only be done in practice by adding a series component - or in maths by adding a negative resistance in parallel, which is why you got crazy results.
That would not have happened if you had properly thought about how the circuit works, before jumping in to (irrelevant, due to a misconception) over-complex calculations.
You need to look at whatever circuit you are working on and visualise its operation, and be able to rough out results in your head, before you start doing precision calcs - if they are ever actually needed, which they are not in a lot of real-world design work; simple mental calculations are often more than sufficient.
eg. My "Divide both by ten" solution in post #6 - it fits the requirements of the question and would be a simple real-world solution to the problem. If the resistor value is small in comparison to the capacitor impedance, the gain change is also going to be small. My ballpark mental calculation put the gain increase at somewhere around 30% or so, safely below the 41% increase limit (100% -> 141%; 1 / 0.7071, which is root 2).
Yes, a calculator is needed for such as capacitive and inductive reactance, resonant frequency and RF calculations - but very rarely for general projects.
It's real-world reality - Even if you choose to use E96 series 1% resistors, that means no resistor is guaranteed to be closer that 1% to it's nominal value and the steps between values are about 1.5%
More likely you would choose from E24 values, which have a step between values of roughly 10%.
And most capacitors are 5% or 10% tolerance, unless you pay crazy prices.
You have to design things to work with lack of precision in normal components, so there is frequently no point calculating at multi-digit accuracy, as long as you understand the principles and can do that if it's ever needed.
If a circuit needs extreme precision, then you use adjustable components in appropriate key locations - trimmer (preset) resistors and capacitors, often in conjunction with a fixed component to limit the adjustment range and increase adjustment accuracy.
Those can be used calibrate things and compensate for inaccuracies in other components, and allow for component aging and drift, so the device or instrument etc. can be recalibrated at times to maintain its precision.