Should Equalizers make a comeback?

Any types of "tone controls" have been eschewed since the early 80's, when I first got involved. Personally, I think the bass contour on the Leben amps is nice to balance out a bass-shy or bass-heavy tune. There are a lot of bad recordings out there. I believe Luxman also offers tone controls. Unfortunately, I think that many manufacturers believe that including tone controls will make many potential buyers shy away. I believe that audiophiles think that once these are included in the circuit, they can never truly be bypassed. I don't know whether this is actually true.

I am starting to think that tone control circuitry and potentiometers have traditionally not been of very good quality. This may be the reason that they have been avoided. I also think an industry arose to accomplish the same ends. In many ways tone control has been replaced in various ways by adding levels of complexity to make a system "synergize." I will be the first to plead guilty to having done this. I rolled tubes, made many cabling switches, even more fundamentally I have bought different speakers, amps, preamps, phono stages etc.to achieve a system I like. I think we all can that different systems do in fact sound different.
That said in defense of those who think tone control is anathema, I must agree it can be dreadful. For instance I tried a mid fi parametric equalizer from the late 70s or early 80s and it absolutely flattened the soundstage, muddied the sound and simply made a good system sound terrible. The possibilty of introducing useful tone control arose when using a computer based equalization program popped up and demanded to know what type of sound I preferred. After trying numerous presets I made a custom scheme. I found it improved the sound (obviously a matter of my taste vs the 0+- line.)
With current advances in understanding the target audience, I now think it is realistic that hardware engineered for critical listening proximal to the source with digital data clearly, can compensate for recordings that are not well made or you just want to sound the way you like it. As mentioned if Leben can achieve high quality with bass contour AKA "loudness button" then amplification circuitry by others should be able to as well.

I can understand noise etc that goes with placing something in the signal chain. If we knock EQ's, then are we saying that we just trust the mastering engineers speakers, eq's etc? Even if the mastering engineers speakers/room are far from the same sound characteristics of ours? We trust the engineer has hearing similar to ours? I think eq/tone controls are quite useful

Are treble adjustments on speakers also forbidden?

John

What I miss is the variable loudness control of my old Yamaha and Vector Research receivers of MANY years ago. Worked GREAT for a little bass boost for low level listening. The Leben mentioned above has a similar feature but it is fixed to one level. Variable loudness was/is a much better way to go ... just do not forget to turn it DOWN as you turn the volume UP or you may over tax your speakers.

Jeff