This leaves out the tidbit that Leeland says he flips the switch and plucks the strings from a different position, which does significantly change the tone. He just doesn’t want to turn the knobs, which he might reasonably be reluctant to do for any number of reasons. It’s not “I’m just gonna do what I want. Fuck the recording engineer” its “Ok. You want a different sound, but I know the better way to change it, so here, I’m gonna flip a nothing switch so we don’t have to argue about it”.
This leaves out the tidbit that Leeland says he flips the switch and plucks the strings from a different position, which does significantly change the tone. He just doesn’t want to turn the knobs, which he might reasonably be reluctant to do for any number of reasons. It’s not “I’m just gonna do what I want. Fuck the recording engineer” its “Ok. You want a different sound, but I know the better way to change it, so here, I’m gonna flip a nothing switch so we don’t have to argue about it”.