To quote PRS, "It all makes a difference to one degree or another."
I'm sure we could get you going on the soldering. Hey, I learned, and I'm an Engineer! I was actually a tech for about 5 years before I earned my degree going to school nights. But even so the guys in the lab yell, "Engineer in the lab!" when one of us walks in to try and keep us away from the soldering irons. ;-)
If you do a lot of volume pot changes when you are playing, as Griff often talks about using the volume knob on the guitar to clean up or make dirty the sound from the amp, without touching the amp. Then you probably need something like that. If you either just switch on a pedal, or change channels on the amp to make it dirty, then chances are you won't need to change your volume on the guitar much. Then it isn't that needed.
You can always adjust your tone down a tad and make the amp a little brighter. Then if you turn down the volume on the guitar, tweak the tone up on the guitar as well.
If you watch people that really care about their tone, they are constantly adjusting the volume and tone controls on the guitar.