Not necessarily true.
The OP said that he plays a lot with knobs. When I am generally satisfied with the default sound of my signal chain, I feel no need to fiddle with the knobs. Sometimes I make slight adjustments depending on the room acoustics, and sometimes I make no adjustments whatsoever.
The situation, as described by OP, suggests that there is something in the signal chain which he doesn't like. May be it's the preamp, may be not. But expanding the EQ capabilities, as such, does not cure the underlining problem... He needs to find a signal chain the sound of which he generally likes without fiddling with knobs.
Well take it easy with the "playing with the knobs" statement, lol. I'm sure everyone tries adjusting things on their gear to see how it affects the sound. You might be looking into that a bit too hard. I'm well aware that a reductive approach is the best one(cut offensive frequencies only). I've been doing that for years. It's also a reality that most bass players struggle with the sound of their piezo pickups at one time or another and that it usually ends up being a compromise. There is also the reality that upright bass gear is hard to experiment with..good stuff is expensive and you never know if it will work well on your particular bass.
I'm also surprised at how many people are diminishing the effectiveness of using an EQ. My experience in my home studio is that EQ is one of the most important factors to sounding good in a mix and can drastically change the tone of the signal received. We all know piezo pickups need some sort of EQ in most cases to not sound like ass. My original post was really more along the lines of, is it worth adding an EQ to the chain or would i be better off getting a beefier preamp that has stronger tone shaping possibilities.
