Tone knob stuck "rolled down"?

I picked up a used bass last week and was a little careless in my quick check. It's not a huge deal but I was curious if a non functioning tone knob would result in the bass sounding like the tone knob was rolled down to zero all the time? I usually keep tone knobs at 10 and it is a short scale bass but it seems to lack treble, it just has "that" rolled down sound to it. I think disconnecting would normally result in the brightest tone the bass could do, if it died?

I peeked inside and nothing seems amiss except maybe the solder joint on the tone pot looks cold but I wanted to ask here before I went poking around inside. Thanks.
 
Change the pot. It'll probably cost you $25 (including the pot) if someone else solders it. Cost is under $10 if you can solder it.

And yes, it will effect your tone. It depends on where in the taper the pot seized but it does effect tone.
 
If you clip the capacitor on the tone pot, it will effectively bypass it. If the tone doesn't brighten up, then the bass just sounds like that.
 
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