To tone control or not to tone control

Artemus: I have never used the unit, but had talked to MegaSam awhile back about one that he was selling. I seem to recall that it had four seperate crossover/turnover points (I may be wrong on this) and that what it did well was to tailor the highs and lows without mucking up the midrange. I have never used any type of inexpensive tone control that did not "damage" the mids with the exception of a Quad of England preamp that had some type of variable adjustment (that I did not quite understand) but that worked very well. If it spares the mids, then I think that it would be worth a try, plus it's small and should be easy to incorporate. In the meantime though I would just play around with the Adcom (which is at hand) and wait to see what else is available. If the Adcom is that unpleasent in the chain then move forward.

Hi Artemus, wish I could help more. As Dekay, I never used this in my system. Sonically, the mid-range darkened only by a tad, the bass was boosted and the highs became more pronounced and a bit harder -- but at least, one got a simulation of highs... I remember (may be wrong on this) the x-tone being connected between source component & line input; this setup may sound better than going thru the tape-loop.
Not much to go on, I'm afraid.
But, do play around with your adcom, as bruce & dekay suggest, it may offer an acceptable solution.

Perhaps I'm a bit daft, but the logic of the prevailing "straight wire with gain ... equalization=distortion" paradigm really mystifies me. The underlying premise that I read in most of the above thread is that EQ violates the purity of the source material.

Throwing caution about being flamed to the wind, may I ask a simple question? What happens in the mixing studio -- if it is a "straight wire with gain" kind of process, then why is it called a MIXING studio? Don't they equalize the bejabbers out of the performance that is being recorded? And if so, does equalization only become pernicious after that point?

To me, this is the logical equivalent of my local municipality refusing to treat the water that they pump from the river because they don't want to adulterate the purity of it. If indeed the water were pure, this would make sense but it doesn't because every upstream municipality dumps their treated sewage water into the river. How does this differ fundamentally from equalizing that which has already been equalized?

Just curious :-)

Perhaps I'm a bit daft, but the logic behind the prevailing "straight wire with gain ... equalization=distortion" paradigm really mystifies me. The underlying premise that I read in most of the above thread is that EQ violates the purity of the source material.

Throwing caution about being flamed to the wind, may I ask a simple question? What happens in the mixing studio -- if it is a "straight wire with gain" kind of process, then why is it called a MIXING studio? Don't they equalize the bejabbers out of the performance that is being recorded? And if so, does equalization only become pernicious after that point?

To me, this is the logical equivalent of my local municipality refusing to treat the water that they pump from the river because they don't want to adulterate the purity of it. If indeed the water were pure, this would make perfect sense but it doesn't because every upstream municipality dumps their treated sewage water into the river.

So ... is there "good" equalization and "bad" equalization? Is it solely dependent on when it is done or who does it? What rules are we going to invent to help us out of this logical predicament?

Just curious :-)

Doc, you are correct to a point. Many (most?) recordings are equalized and processed. This is especially true with pop and rock recordings that are recorded to many tracks and then mixed down to 2. A lot of these are equalized and compressed to sound better on car radios so they don't always sound so good on a high end system. However, there are a large number of recordings that are recorded directly to 2 tracks with little or no processing. That is I why I advocated putting the tone control in the processor loop so it could be switched in and out as needed.