Some feedback on a proper setup sesh that I did last weekend.
My drums are a set of Mapex Saturn V’s, (10, 12, 16 and 22x16 BD)with a Ludwig Blackrolite snare. I tuned the toms and snare, using the drum seat as a workstand/muffle for the “other” head. The Saturns have their supplied Remo heads.
I like ringing, singing drums, so I opted for the max resonance tuning (same notebatter and reso). I downloaded the Tune Bot tuning manual from the interwebz which has suggestions of the ratio between lug pitch and drum fundamental pitch,. Guide is here:
http://tune-bot.com/tunebottuningguide.pdf
I aimed for C-G-D perfect fourths tuning. I found that the suggested lug pitches worked well for the 10 and 12 inch toms, but were way off for the 16 inch floor tom. In fairness, Tune Bot mention that these are starting points and not guaranteed destinations.
Two things that I found were:
1 – When very close to the desired lug pitch (within less than 5 Hz), it’s a bit tricksy to get absolute accuracy, even moving the drum key a poofteenth of a turn. On reflection, this may not be surprising. Guitar machine hands have a 1:n working ratio, and guitarists make tiny adjustments to tuning (and yes, I realise that a string and a drum head are different beasts).
2 – Lug tuning is not in isolation. Changing the lug tuning of a lug will change the tune of other lugs, especially the diametrically opposite lug and the neighbour lugs.
As others have mentioned, the ‘filter’ button is a godsend as it forces the tuner to look out for a particular pitch and not get misled by other notes happening at the same time.
Tuning the snare proved more challenging than tuning the toms. My snare is now tuned higher than I have had it before (I like a nice fat sounding snare), but sounds better to my ears, and with less snare buzz. It seemed to me that the Tune Bot recommendations are not as good for the snare as for the toms. That may be for any number of reasons. It may be that snares have more variability in sound than toms, it may be because there are more overtones in snare sound than in tom sounds. And it may be because I just wussied out and didn’t want to risk tearing the reso head with less than an hour to go before a band rehearsal. Also, I loosened but didn’t remove the snares, which would have added to the “notes” going on.
I’m pleased with the results. It seems that my drums were not badly tuned to start with. What has changed is now I have a defined sound that I have tuned to, which I can store and save as a default setting. What I’ve done until now is tune the drums to themselves, and so that each drum sounds pleasing. I’m looking forward to being able to try different tunings, and swap tunings relatively quickly. Some learning is still required. It took me around an hour to tune the toms and snare…and I still want to have a go at tuning the bass drum.
Money well spent? I think so.