To tone control or not to tone control

Tone controls are a necessity on alot of music. All you naysayers dead against them are correct from a textbook standpoint,but you must understand that all music is not Lyrita, RCA Living Stereo, Mercury etc. Put tone controls on those and you will ruin the sound. I am a back to mono man musically, I mean, that I listen to mostly artists from before 1958. The greatest voices ever recorded( I'm talking Ezio Pinza, Tito Schipa, Titta Ruffo, Lawrence Tibett, Billie Holliday, etc.)very much do need tone control compensation.In fact, I need to switch preamps for older music because my tone controless preamp does not work at all with them.
78 RPM transfers onto CDs are particularly offensive with a top end that simply isnt there. Tipping up the response with a good tone control makes them appear to have the data again.
Mark Levinson (the man), saw that some of his favorite music from the mono era was just that way and adressed the problem incredibly with the Palette. How I wish I could have afforded one.

Cornfedboy, I did check into the Z systems digital EQ. It retails for $2500 which i thought was pricey. Their literature seems to indicate that it hooks between the DAC and transport of your cdp so unless you are running separates you cannot use it , that is unless your 1 pc cdp has digital ins and outs. Mine does not and I suspect most 1 pc cdp do not.

I thought that it was mentioned above but cannot find it now (perhaps I am thinking of another thread) but Musical Fidelity used to make a little add on called the X-Tone that you should be able to use as Bruce mentions using the Adcom in his above post and it could then be either switched in or out. The problem though is finding one on the used market, though it should cost $150 or less. I have seen three of them for sale within the last six months at Audiogon, Audo Reveiw and Ebay.

Great idea, Dekay! Artemus, grab it! Have heard a X-tone and it wasn't bad... easy to use, too (U can switch back & forth). Sorry, it didn't come to mind.
Greg

I know I will probably catch some flack for this post. I dont like tone controls, I prefer to choose my components to get the sound I want however the best tone control I have ever heard and would not say a thing negative about is the BBE sonic maximizer built for home stereo purposes. It has contour (low) and definition(highs) controls and works amazingly well. On a bad system it can do wonders. I dont know how well it will work with a good one though. They are only about $200 new so a used one might be well worth trying if the price is right. Many recording studios use these machines and live performances are often amplified with BBE processes. It sounds good. I dont own one though.Good luck!