Question about Tone Controls + Equalizers

Thanks everyone for their inputs and suggestions.

Always looking to learn about how a system can be improved even though we may not all agree on the approach we can still learning something new, at least I do.

My "Tone Controls" consist of adjustable vertical blinds in front of the 12" windows behind my speakers for the high end and mids, plus removing the grills.  For the bass, I use a separate, but matched amp and preamp for subs, with a double pole double toggle to switch or remove bass crossovers, for the purpose of keeping things in phase while having the ability to add harmonics for old, crappy recordings, especially on LP.  Yes, I did measure the center of the main and sub magnets to place every thing in the same plane.  If you have an extra amp and preamp, give it a try on subs..

LOKI works great for me. I use it most of the time because in my living room my speakers have too much bass despite positioning adjustments and bass traps. So I tame the bass a bit more on many recordings with the LOKI.
its easy to defeat During use,  and doesn’t add any noise to the signal as far as I can hear.
If i were you I would defeat the tone control on the amp if I had the Loki in the system.
Simply a bargain. Check out the Audiophiliac review on YouTube for Steve G review.

Music in "its purest form" is what sounds most like real music.  Having no tone controls to use and the room makes the sound thin?  Is far from purest sound when compared to real music.  From what I understand, the problem with most tone controls is the major phase shift that they caused.  Instead of just adding bass, it muddles the bass.  What we need is a linear tone control.  I have owned various small audiophile speakers. I have been using a Barcus Berry Sonic Maximizer for years. When using its adjustable linear bass boost it makes small speakers sound satisfying without any muddy sound that typical tone controls can introduce.  With the high quality small speakers I leave the processor for the high frequencies off and find a very natural balance.

I'm 70 years old and have been spinning vinyl and enjoying records for more than 50 of those years.  My first sort of "hi-fi" system came back stateside with me in 1971 after my Army duty in Belgium.  I no longer have any components from this system.  

One thing I learned over the years about audio:    "Simple is Better".

The system in my music room consists of:  
Four Turntables, 2 Belt Drive, 2 Direct Drive.
Four Emotiva XPS-1 Phono Preamps
One Passive Alpine Stepped volume control, with Source control
Two Vintage Restored 6L6 Monoblock vacuum tube amps
Two Vintage Restored Frazier "Black Box" Theater speakers.  
Speaker and Interconnect cables are modest upgrade components, nothing costing over $60 per cable.  (No Monster Wire Here!)

Note there are NO tone shaping controls in this set up as they are just not needed.  Many audio magazines over the years have recommended to keep your audio system as simple as possible for the Best Audio performance.  My system does not even have a balance control, as it's not needed.  I can actually control the volume of each mono amp by adjusting the on board input sensitivity pot.

Some of my local friends are also into quality audio, and have followed me in simplifying their audio component chain in their system to achieve better audio.  Try replacing a Preamp with Tone controls with a passive, volume only preamp.  You just may find that better audio can be found in simplifying your audio chain.