Go get out your pitchforks, I’ve done a sacrilegious thing. . .

Reading this thread, it seems to me that it is the equalizers who are defensive, whereas the anti-equalizers are either trying to be funny (which is OK in my book but could be provocative to an equalizer) or asking reasonable questions or making reasonable points. My opinion is, if it sounds better to you, do it, but let's not pretend equalizers are completely and utterly transparent.  And beware of putting stress on your amplifiers or speakers when you are trying to correct a major dip in the in-room response, particularly in the bass end of the spectrum.  There is no free lunch.

Lewm,

I couldn’t agree more, but it’s the degree of distortion that is really relevant in broadest sense. If you can’t hear it . . . Well. Just because something adds some level of distortion doesn’t make it bad - tubes anyone. (BTW almost all my equipment had tubes).  Technically EVERYTHING makes a difference, the room being a major contributor, so whether you are buying equipment without EQ’s or with it ultimately the signal passes through thousands of capacitor, resistors, tubes (in some cases), and all the small lengths of wire interconnecting that stuff, the end result is all that matters. Many paths to get there, very few definitively wrong answers, because in the end it’s ALL subjective.

@last_lemming forgive my lame attempt at humor.  I did not realize trying tone controls was so effing serious.

Why didn't you get the MAX?

IMO, @audnacious hit the nail squarely on the head, and very succinctly, too:

"A man must have his tools to correct that which needs adjustment."

The more tools you have at your disposal, the better job you can do, regardless of  the task.

No biggie. I got the max because the system is quite nice just as it is and to go and change out a piece of equipment to make a tweak to the sound would be a high stakes (read priced) gamble at this point since I can end up spending thousands and the sound quality might only move laterally once I got the piece of equipment in the house. This isn’t my main critical listening rig, it’s just the rig that I wanna have good tone in timber while I’m doing chores around the house or doing the dishes or having company over; so absolute nuance in timing and soundstage is not required, so I figured, based on the information I had read, at this piece would do what I needed it to do which is tweak specific areas of the frequency response to bring it in line with what I wanted given my limitations. 
 

for instance, I could’ve bought some really expensive cables for the price I paid for the max, and that might’ve worked perfectly, however if I ever move, or ever relocate the equipment , or by another source, I would basically have to start the tweaking process all over again. But with the max it’s just a few tweaks in a few minutes and back to where I was.