My two main "first-call" basses are poles apart. One is a P bass- alder body, quarter-sawn maple neck with rosewood board glued on, one pickup, one knob to make it less loud, one knob to make it less trebley. The other is a Lakland Deluxe 4-94- ash body with maple cap, flat-sawn maple neck with maple fingerboard glued on, on jazz-style PUP, one MM-style PUP, and a pre-amp with a volume, a pickup blend, and active bass, mid, and treble. Plus it has a toggle switch to select either or both coils of the MM PUP, and there are three switches in the circuit board to select the center of the mid range control, AND a switch built into the volume pot to by-pass all the active stuff. So that's five switches and five knobs.
First, I didn't buy either bass based on the number of controls. I bought them because they both simply sounded great. That's all. Second, I've never "knocked" any knobs around on any of my basses. My hands are on the strings, unless I'm tweaking a setting. And that's it- tweaking is subtle. I have a default setting on my Laklands (all EQ flat, pan centered, volume wide open, and the bridge PUP selected to the neck coil of the MM PUP). I set my amp so it sounds good in the room with that setting. And I don't change my amp when I switch to the P bass. That's because I want my amp to translate the sound of each bass separately. I use the P when its character and sound is what I want, and I use the Lakland when that's what I need.
Plus I don't find it at all complicated. If you know what each knob does (that is you've played with it enough to know how far you need to move a knob to get what kind of effect, and you know what to expect when you move a particular knob) and you're listening to your sound as you play, it's really easy. This one makes it quieter (but that's what fingers are for too), this one makes the mids come out or go away, this one makes it either sparkle or clank depending on how far I turn it, this one makes it fatter or muddier (or less fat or less muddy), and this one alters what part(s) of the string I'm focusing the sound from. Five minutes and you should know your bass enough that it's no longer complicated.
On stage I don't move knobs a lot. And I don't have precise settings for certain songs. Sure, I'll boost the mids for something like "Born Under A Bad Sign", or switch to the neck PUP only on "My Girl", etc. But it's not like I have to worry about the difference between the mid knob at 3 and at 3.5.
John
Just leave set flat if you don't like them, who cares? I love a simple, passive bass as much as the next guy, but I don't understand what the big deal is with a 3-band EQ w/ sweepable mids, active/passive switches, etc. Just because they are there doesn't mean you HAVE to use them. I would rather judge a bass on what it sounds like than how many pots it has. The ability to get a multitude of good tones on one instrument is a pretty compelling argument IMO.
