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The optional Varitone can replace a tone knob or work in conjunction with it. The Varitone has enjoyed a resurgence as of late.

I think Gibson invented the varitone in '52. You probably recall varitones in only a few instruments, the Gibson ES 345 Stereo guitar and Gibson made a gold topped Les Paul bass which had 4 or 5 position varitones. Acoustic 360's and Kustom 250 amp heads had 3 position varitones to help you find your midrange character. It's passive and boosts frequencies by cutting others: super clean. My Elita Varitone is a 6 position rotary switch that invokes different combinations of capacitors and coils I developed for different sounds. Position 1 is flat, wide open bass. 2, 3, and 4 are classic tones like Jaco and Jamerson, hi end roll-offs, and 5 and 6 are where Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke are, that hip bright but deep midrange scooped kind of sounds. Basically does the same things as one does with amp EQ which is probably cut treble and add bass and play with the midrange/presence; it voices your bass. It's onboard and you have choices. AND No battery, 100% passive and dependable. Old school, just like me. Even hides under a normal Fender knob. My Varitone is the best. Bob, aka ToneLove, my tech, makes them for me. We use a different kind of rotary switch and a series of resisters to eradicate the problem other Varitones have: switching noise. Plus we use polypropylene capacitors. I didn't know this until Bob hipped me up. Polypropylene caps are noticeably warmer. I didn't know at first, but I noticed a warmer sound and mentioned it to him thinking it was the amp or the pickups I was using. He said it was the poly-whatever caps. Me putting Varitones in basses is sort of a CertainBass exclusive in the modern sense ( I don't any other bass maker installing them). It's the baddest thing since sliced bread.

I install my Varitone in conjunction with an optional blend pot. We'll discuss your style of playing to see what you need. The Varitone makes a P bass atomic, and makes a Jazz bass poisonous. A ton of tone control AND no batteries, totally passive. And since it's a rotary switch utilizing a normal knob, it doesn't ruin the classic, vintage look of my Fender style basses. My stereo, dual output basses utilize two onboard varitones. Ask about my stereo bass configurations if you're willing to go to any lengths for the most huge sound ever (and carry two amps).

Varitone with or without Blend Control?

First, how to determine if you need the blend control? If you routinely play with your stock passive tone control all the way down for the bassiest tone, you probably don't need it, and your bass will look like a stock Fender as we just replace the standard tone control with the Varitone - still a two knob set-up for P bass and three knob for Jazz.

Alternatively, if you look for the sweet spots in your tone control, you'll want the blend control. When we use the Varitone in conjunction with the blend control it complicates things a bit; it adds one knob in addition to stock Fender set-ups. I've schemed a couple of different ways to do this.

For the Precision bass, it's fairly simple, but we do have a few options. I have Precision pickguards without control holes drilled so I can put your knobs anywhere you like. The photo below shows one of my P basses where the volume control is located in the same place as a stock P bass, but the controls are spaced closer to together than on a stock P bass, but spaced the same as a Jazz bass as the Jazz bass control plate shows us.

The second P bass option is to keep the P bass spacing which moves the volume control closer to the pickup as shown below:

The third set-up uses a sidemount jack as shown below like on a standard PJ set-up. The upside to this is that the volume control is in the same place as a stock P bass and the spacing between knobs is the same as well. The downside is that I deplore side mount jacks. They get knocked around easily and compromise long term dependability. So unless you're accustomed to side mount jacks (which I am not as well as most diehard Fender players), let's not do it.

Here is a PJ set-up with Volume/Volume/VaritoneVaritone Blend with side mount jack that PJ's normally have:

To do a top mount jack for PJ, I just move all the knobs over to the right and put the jack where the left most knob is like on a standard P bass. This is option is somewhat more costly because all pre-routed PJ bodies are also drilled for the side mount jack. So, to do a top mount jack PJ, have to start with a P body and hand rout the bridge pickup cavity.

Varitone with blend control for Jazz basses:

For the Jazz bass, the Varitone with blend control took a little more conniving. First, I can't get undrilled Jazz control plates yet like I can get undrilled P bass pisckguards. But I figured out a way around it in order to meet the objective of having the four controls and a top mount jack..

The first option is the simplest and employs a side mount jack (you already know what I think about side mount jacks, but I'm showing this option first as it's the least costly):

The next option is what I did on my personal backup Jazz bass and employs a concentric or "stack" pot. The neck pickup volume is on the inside knob and the bridge pickup is on the outter ring, then we have the Varitone then the blend control and still a top mount jack (I used two "chicken head" knobs, but we can use any knobs you want including stock Jazz bass knobs):

Now, on my main bass, I did a 5 hole control plate. How did I do that since I can't get undrilled Jazz control plates? I started with a 3 hole a la '60 and '61 Jazz and reissues and added two holes. This gets us a closer knob spacing than a stock Jazz, but we can use standard CTS pots and standard knobs for the volumes, and we still get a top mount jack, but I have to use the smaller Bournes pot for the blend control to fit between the jack and the huge Varitone. This is the most costly option but, in my opinion, the best. This is what I used on what I call THE Bass which is Elita CertainBass serial number 0001, my main axe:

So I hope this answers all the questions about how to configure the Varitone with blend control. If you have any other ideas, I'm making you a custom bass, so I'll do anything you want as long as it's reasonable.