It really depends on the guitar, the pick-ups and the way you set up your amp, just having a tone control in the guitars signal path actually takes a little top end off your pick-ups, it comes down to what do you want the tone controls to do, are they fine the way they are and you leave them turned up all the way, or do you desire to use them but they have little or no effect? Volume and Tone controls are very easy to customize, if you have any more questions, come down to the TECH TALK section of this forum.......