Who wants a set of tone controls on preamps?

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.

I know we're talking pre-amps here, but...

I like the idea of the trim controls on Decware's Torii MkIII amplifier:

"Trim control on each channel so you can adjust the tightness of the bass perfectly for any given loudspeaker. It does this by putting the voice coil of your loudspeaker in parallel with one of the resistors inside the amp so that the loudspeakers fluctuating impedance can tell the amp to put out more or less power. It does this in real time, nearly at the speed of light.

Trim control on each channel for the treble. This allows you to adjust the top end this amp offers so that virtually any loudspeaker can sound right, be it a Lowther full range driver or your favorite hi-fi speaker."

And then on the Mini Torii amp:

"Adjustable sound - designed with high efficiency single drivers as a likely paring by many customers, a defeatable treble control was incorporated that works perfectly to take any hotness out of the top end, be it the speaker or recording."

I've never heard either of these amps, but like the idea of being able to make these kind of finer adjustments, which is about all I ever feel the desire to make, and at the amplifier level, to boot.

Having switched from a tone control (albeit defeatable and completely bipassable) preamp to one without them, I can say don't miss the tone controls at all. In fact I WILL say it. There, I said it. I control the bass a little bit by turning the level up and down on a REL sub, but otherwise welcome the higher resolution of the better preamp.