Hi ozzalref, Your question is valid and prompts two different answers. The short answer is that there is not enough gain in the existing amp to add tone controls. It is intended for use with an external preamp delivering about 1 volt of signal. There is no reason why one could not be included though. Source selection switches as well. There are several circuits on the web that include tone controls. If you find some you might want to include, email the circuit or the link and I'll check to see that there would be no problems. The second answer to the question is one that took me a long time to learn and is sort of touchy with many people in the audio community. Simply put, tone controls are used to correct deficiencies in the sound system (source material also). It might be that the speakers don't respond well below 100HZ or the FM tuner is noisy. So I design everything to be properly balanced. I have no tone controls in my system. Does this create any problems, not really as I refuse to listen to anything not up to par. Please don't take this wrong, I'm not a "purist" , only that I want all parts of the system to match. From source (CD, XM, FM, LP, tape) to the speakers, all have flat response in the audio band. I have no need for tone corrections. So if your source material is good and the rest of the system up to par you might not want tone controls. If you include them, I would make a way to bypass them when you actually don't need them. The reason for this is that anything you place in the signal path will introduce some noise, and will have some distortion and may cause unwanted frequency shifts (either phase or amplitude). Welcome to the audio community, listen and enjoy.
Good listening Bruce
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