That part has me confused too. From my current (very limited) understanding an audio taper pot has 10% change at half rotation while a linear pot has 50% change at half rotation. Would not a linear pot give a more effective range of tonal variation? Or am I missing something there?
That's how the taper works but not how our ears work. Our ears don't hear in a linear fashion, so the audio taper was designed to dupe us into thinking we're hearing a linear control. Linear taper, meanwhile, is actually linear, but we don't hear it as such.
If you use a linear taper for tone, you won't hear the effect until the last bit of the rotation, which bunches the entire sweep into a narrow range, giving you less control (it becomes almost like a switch). So with a linear taper pot, most of the rotation goes to waste, whereas with an audio taper pot, you'll hear the effect of the rotation evenly across the pot.
On the other hand, with volume pots, the bunching effect can actually be desirable because it allows one to turn back the volume a fair bit before one hears any/much volume reduction. Meanwhile, series resistance is being introduced; in the case of a two-pickup bass, this helps isolate the pickups from one another, allowing for finer control over the pickup blend.
There are quite a few threads devoted to linear vs. audio taper for volume controls, but I can't imagine anyone preferring a linear taper for a tone pot. (Of course, I can also imagine someone now responding that they do. But take no heed--that person is wrong.
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