Who wants a set of tone controls on preamps?

Check out Luxman.

Recently purchased a new Cambridge Audio 650A for the garage , it has tone controls . I thought it would be the cat's meow for an area with six reflective surfaces . As it turned out I use it with the tone control defeat turned on .

There is very small demand for tone controls in high end audio. On the other hand every cheap Walmart system has them. There are two problems with tone controls IMHO:

1. Deficiencies of the recordings (or room) are too complex to be fixed with tone controls. How can you reduce amount of acoustic bass without altering sound of the piano lower registers etc. ?

2. It requires additional capacitors in the signal path creating phase shift differences between channels (even with expensive tight tolerance high quality caps) unless it is done digitally. Unfortunately digital processing requires additional A/D and D/A and this won't improve quality for sure.

Tone controls might be useful for some screwed-up recordings but I try to avoid them to start with, and don't want to pay extra. I can always use tone controls in my Itunes but never do. I suspect that my current system doesn't have too many deficiencies compare to my older cheap systems where I had to adjust tone controls constantly. Cheap speakers, for instance, might produce too much mid-bass and not enough of low bass or sometimes produce distorted sibilants making it necessary to adjust from recording to recording.

This subject was discussed many times before including examples of gear with tone controls.

Music Reference USED to offer limited range tone controls for their preamps on a custom basis ... not sure if they still do or not. I would LOVE to hear a well implemented tone control system on a preamp. Appears others would too if you have ever seen the price of a Cello Pallette on the used market!

I still have a carver pre-amp that has the most flexible on board tone controls I have used.

It sounds fine in my second system, but leaves a bit to be desired in terms of overall sound quality in my main system, where I replaced it with an ARC sp16 a couple years back.

It is a very decent compromise though between flexibility and sound quality for reasonable cost.

It was also made over 20 years ago now though. To do the same with good quality today would surely increase the cost and probably only have limited appeal as a result.