dboomer
Senior Member
Yeah wait till you see it, its not 'as easy' to use right away as a TUNEBOT, but it does produce better results, hence the learning curve
Well I guess that's relative ... Not as easy to use as something that doesn't work as well. You may have to think about tuning a little differently than you did before. I know I did. But it's very easy to use when you understand that the main benefit is that you are tuning the drum to itself and not to each other in the set (although you are doing that to your own choice).
What I do ( in a 3 tom setup) is to roughly tune the middle sized tom to the relative pitch I want just by ear. You just sing that note in your head and tune the drum to that pitch trying to keep equal pitch on the batter and reso head. If they are the same head top and bottom then they will roughly have equal tension for equal pitch. If you are concerned about hitting a specific note then when you first fire up the Resotune then only push the "find pitch" button. It's gonna do its thing and finally tell you what that pitch it. If you want it to be something other than what it is now is the time to tune higher or lower. Push the find pitch button again til you get what you want while making small, consistent changes. Once you are happy with the relative fundamental pitch of the drum then push the "tune lug" button. Again after its done its thing it will give you a value. At this point you can't really (and don't want to) change this one. this value is a direct reflection of the "pitch" value. Now press the clear lug button. You should already be "green" on the first lug. Slide the Resotune around to the next lug and tweak it until it stops on the green. Keep going until you've done all the lugs. If they are all pretty close you may not have to go around again. But if some of the lugs are way off then tweaking one of them may overly affect some of the others and you'll have to go around again. I usually do anyway just to be sure. It's is very easy to hear the magic as you bring each lug into the green. You will hear the tone generator make the drum louder as the pitch at the lug comes into tune. Now I turn the drum over and do the reso side. If your heads are the same model and your tensions are even top and bottom then the lug pitch should be the same. If you tension your reso head higher or lower then the lug pitch will be different. So when you set the tension differently you get more and different harmonics. That may be something that you want. Personally I like it better when they are the same.
Sorry, this is getting to be a long post. Ok now that I have my middle tom perfect I roughly tune my upper and lower toms off that one, usually to the "call to post" pitches ( or so). Once I've got those rough pitches I was the Resotune same as above to tune those drums to themselves. It's really not very hard at all and probably takes less time than it took me to type this all out