fwiw I have all active basses, and never run the passive tone wide open. I also never juice the treble, but control that end of things with passive tone. Mostly will mess with bass or mid (if the bass has it) wrt onboard preamp eq. But I'm not a zingy tone kinda guy, however it does need to be articulate. Agree that passive tones are great, and although I never run them at 0 or 100%, I constantly am tweaking in-between depending on what tone I'm after.
I do adjust my preamp depending on song needs as well. Like many on here I sometimes kick up the treble some and then close off the VTC for an interesting tone. I also like to boost the bass some and then adjust my fDeck for a thick but tight effect. My pedal board is pretty simple, fDeck, Compression(smoothie), OD(sonic spark) - so between those and my on board preamp I get all the tones I ever really use into any system.
