Tone Control?...I don't need no stinkin' tone control!

[retslock]

I never use the tone controls but I don’t need to remove them. It’s not important enough to spend the time and money rewiring and replacing the pick guards.

 

[jglunt]

I never use the tone controls but I don’t need to remove them. It’s not important enough to spend the time and money rewiring and replacing the pick guards.

In my own defense (because who else is going to do it?) the preamp in my WAV4 went bad (a Seymour Duncan which I had installed to replace the rather lame original) and it was 18 days out of warranty. With encouragement from @mapleglo, I swapped it from active to passive with no tone control. It has no pickguard and is a white bass. I just bought some white plastic hole plugs to fill the extra holes. They're still there if I ever want to reconfigure it. The SB-2 had a pickguard that was beginning to crack, so a replacement was needed anyway.

 

[JJR58]

I did something like that 50 years ago. Just volume for each pick up and a phase switch each for the jazz and p pick ups.

View attachment 5338554

The "tone" came from blending the pick ups or not.

I’ve got something similar going on.
No tone control.
And no phase switching though.
There’s a Delano under the pick up cover.

 

[2thAche]

I just traded a bass for this and I'm digging it. It's single purpose tho; crunch. I can't imagine a bass without a tone knob TBH cause I'm never stuck on a single tone.

 

[Williethump]

The Ovation-inspired bass looks stunning!

A unique tribute to the Charles Kaman helicopter bass, a beauty. Lovely minimalism too. I never touch the volume or tone knobs on my basses, both being maxed at all times. Of course I am a bedroom bass student with the Orange Crush 50watt amp within arm's reach to change sounds.

 

[drumvsbass]

The tone control was developed by Leo Fender as a way to know when to change your strings. With fresh strings, it is often necessary to roll the treble almost all the way off just to get an adequate bass tone. As the evening, tour, career progresses, and the freshness of your strings decrease, so does the tone pot increase. OHHHHmmmmmm.... Once you get the tone pot all the way open, and there is still more tone wanting, then and only then is it time to change your strings. Some players might never open the tone pot all the way, hence they never change their strings.
None of this is truth, but it also kinda is...

 

[Williethump]

I'm waiting for the guy who's such a purist he forgoes tone controls, volume controls, and the output jack. Anyone that brave?

Bluetooth output?

 

[kobass]

 

[tb-player]

I have zero use for a passive tone control. I like active tone circuits, but I never use them to roll off treble. I love the clank!

I’m the exact opposite. I think every active bass should have an overall tone control. Different strokes, I guess.

 

[mongo2]

Is there anybody else out there brave enough to go volume-only?

Several of my basses have the controls bypassed and my DIY builds don't even have a volume control. They just have one humbucking pickup wired straight to the jack.

 

[climber]

I just never use the EQ on my amp and barely use it on my bass. And that’s mostly booting or cutting the mids. But I play a lot of different styles in any given band. ‍

 

[SteC]

Two (soon to be three) of my basses have a switch that, when engaged, bypasses the volume and tone controls and makes the signal go from the pickup selector straight to the output jack. I usually just use the switch on.

Do you notice a difference in tone if you have everything fully open and you flip the switch?

 

[smperry]

Just volume and blend on this one of mine.

 

[gtirard]

My next bass will have my dream controls arrangement:
- Volume
- Potary pickup selector (neck, middle, neck and middle, bridge, all together in series)
- (Tone hidden in the back. I could do without it, but since it's there, why not, for a set and forget setting…)

 

[rooster]

No tone control...I use the producer switch to change tone.

 

[jdjk7]

Do you notice a difference in tone if you have everything fully open and you flip the switch?

Yes, both in tone and in volume. One of the basses has TI JFs while the other has Rotosound Ultramags. For the TIJFs it's a little less noticeable, but for the Rotos it is very noticeable. Not just in the highs, but the high mids too. Volume increases just a little bit. It's nice to take an overdrive pedal like a BBBOD, turn the bypass on and set my drive tone, and then turn it off, roll back the volume and tone, and set a good clean tone. Lets me cop 2-channel amp tones with just the bass and pedal.

I think something like this is a good way to get away with the warmer sound of 250k pots and high capacitor values while still having the option of bright, present tones.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Here are some basses I used to have or currently own; all are passive basses, no battery required.

1999 fretless Zon Sonus 5/1. Single S/D humbucking pickup permanently wired with the coils in parallel, single volume control; custom made for me by Zon.

1998 fretted Zon Sonus 5/1. Originally, it was the same as the above bass with single S/D humbucking pickup wired with the coils in parallel, single volume control; custom made for me by Zon. Many years later I sent the bass to Joe to add the second pickup and a different harness along with abalone fingerboard dots. As it is in this photo there are volume/tone for each pickup (the tone controls are the stacked ones) and the volume controls have pull switches to change each humbucking pickup from parallel to series coils. The preamp, itself, was a buffering preamp so there is no interaction between the two pickups.

This bass, a Rickenbacker 4004L SPC, has two different types of toaster pickups, each controlled by a selector switch along with individual volume controls for the two pickups.

Note there are no tone controls on these basses.

I installed the Hipshot hardware (tuning keys and bridge) on the Zons.

 

[JIO]

I use my tone controll on my P-bass all the time.

Gosh, I guess we're not brave enough to not use a tone control"

 

[Les Fret]

I use my tone knob all the time. It’s sort of a must on a jazz bass bridge pickup.

What is the benefit (other than maybe optical) of getting rid of the tone knob? I don’t see any benefits but I am curious.

 

[subdude67]

I did no volume, tone only