OP back with more thoughts - Years ago I hated flats. They sounded terrible. Then, against my better judgement I tried them during a gig and found that blah sound at home worked really well in a mix. Much better than I expected. I learned.
Recently I've decided to check my assumptions about the muddy tone from having the tone control rolled to its darkest setting. Solo at home, sounds terrible. But in the mix it works much better than I would have thought. Especially for those fills on the higher notes & strings. It is sort of like the sound of flats with the sustain or rounds.
And there you have it -- the needs of the gig vs the needs of the mix. I couldn't understand why anyone would want flats -- for decades. Then I got a Dean acoustic bass for home practice, and randomly decided to get flats for it. Wow - I liked it so much, I got flats for one of my electric guitars - which I didn't like so much ... but the acoustic bass really found its voice with flats. I subsequently bought more in both long and short scale, so I could have them on my fretless as well.
But, getting back to the tone knob: never. Partly because my influences include some rather trebly bassists, but also because ... well, let me illustrate: I recently provided bass for a guitarist friend who was auditioning drummers, but didn't yet have a bassist. I brought my Markbass 1x15 because I knew it would do the job in terms of volume. At one point I shifted up from low E to a higher E and ... it still sounded the same; there was no sense of lift, because all that low-throbbing 15" resonance obliterated the difference. And the thing is, the BL loved it -- they always do, because really all most guitarists want from bass is to fill out the sound between guitar and drums -- especially in a trio. Fill the room like sonic glue, everyone's happy. But if you're standing next to a pounding drummer, it's kinda hard to tell just what note is being played, unless it's vastly wrong -- and maybe not even then.
This isn't such a problem on a big outdoor stage -- then, there really is a need for the bass to be large. 2x15's, baby! But I rarely play such gigs, and I notice that recording is another matter entirely: a big boomy sound takes up too much space to use as default. I much prefer a tone that can actually be discerned intelligibly, and that carries into my live rig. So I prefer splitting the signal to a (solid-state) guitar amp which has the low turned down and the midrange up, which is effectively my monitor. I suppose the result is a scoop, since the MB carries the lows.
Now: I was suitably impressed when I read an article about the magic of zeroing out the tone for reggae bass, and I stand behind nobody in my admiration of Family Man's drive, tone, and witty minimalism. I could see trying that, if I had very new strings. Maybe my choice is just economic: I'm always playing older strings anyway, and maybe I just don't have any treble to lose
