Preamps ... no bass or treble control?

Hpims is right about the Mac. Quad used to have a pretty good pre-amp with similar items but called them something other than tone controls; I can't remember what.

I think two reasons exist for not having tone controls:

1) It's still considered "less than purist and therefore not cool" to have them.

2) The designers don't have to address them as it would take more skill and work.

Not saying designers are lazy but why should they waste time and effort when we are demanding them? I remember calling conrad-johnson in 1990 asking when they would start supplying remote control volume with the pre-amps. I was told in a rather haughty tone, "We will never include remote controls. They do nothing but degrade the sound." Theirs are now the state of the art and accepted as the norm. It would be nice if we would start demanding the same effort applied to proper tone controls, and the companies would start compying.

Tone controls effect the time domain and phase characteristics of the single. Most operate over too great a range for them to be useful. They also affect the harmonic structure of the music.
Manufacturers who design for the so called "High end" will not use tone controls for the very reasons I stated above. High end is about sonic accuracy for better or worse.
As for the 12 o'clock setting, many of the manufacturers have the tone control circuit out at this position. There is a benign (null) point with most all of them somewhere. NAD used this back in the 70's. Also, some feature a tone control defeat switch so you can have both features.

Most audiophiles don't use tone controls out of ignorance. Unless your music collection is comprised of perfectly recorded music, then at some point you'd be better off with some form of tone controls. Tone controls shouldn't be used to correct system or room problems, but to address problem recordings. I believe the audiophile prejudice against tone controls is a relic from the all analog days when added circuitry did add noise and otherwise distort the signal. I a digital environment that simple is no longer the case. Tone shaping/equalization can now be precisely applied without any deleterious artifacts. There's tons of great, but less than optimally recorded music out there. You can either not listen to it, listen to it and wince or enjoy it after twisting a knob. Your system should be a servant to your music collection, not the other way around.

As with all things audio, there are good an less good implementations of tone controls. Tact, Z-Systems and Drawmer make excellent digital tone controls/parametric EQs. Cello and McIntosh make very usuable analog tone controls.

We now use cables to affect the sound instead of bass and treble controls, as they apparently are "more precise than tone controls, and don't affect the sonic signature" as some have commented here. Go figure.
If 7671 is right in saying that "The sound is tweaked by room acoustics, speaker placement,cabling..." then how could it be as Asonciyouth indicates that "true fidelity is in essence staying true to the original music, thus adjusting certain frequency levels is the opposite of what pure hifi is going for". Is there a certain place in a certain room using certain cables etc., ect. that "true fidelity" apears.
It's nonsense - see what Tomryan says - much closer to reality.
MC, Accuphase and some other high end pre's have tone controls. Imagine - being able to affect the sound via a high quality potentiometer without have to deal with cables - almost boggles the mind eh? Otherwise, according to advise here, you'll be moving your speakers, changing your cables etc. everytime you put another disc in.

Search for a thread on loudness controls from about 3 months ago if you want another howl on this subject.

Onhwy61,

Just because your tone control is digital doesn't mean that
it is without deleterious artifacts. The tone control is
characterized by a "transfer function" - the ratio of the
Laplace transform of the output over the Laplace transform
of the input.

For a given transfer function; you can implement it either
in analog or digital. Either way - the deleterious effect
will be exactly the SAME!! The deleterious effect is a
property of the transfer function, and not whether the
implementation is analog or digital.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist