drummerchris666
Member
So basically I'm terrible at tuning so I'm thinking about getting the drumdial. But is it worth the price? Does it actually help me tune or is it just a piece of crap?
The best use of the drumdial is to take readings when your drums sound really good. I have a notebook of readings that it took off my drums and I can "repeat" certain settings.
Of course having your drum in a perfect reading doesn't mean it's going to sound the best, you can always tweak it by ear a little after that.
What I mean by being terrible at tuning is I can never tell the difference in pitch from one tuning thing (I don't know what they're called) to the other. So, will the drum dial help me with getting each tuning thing to the same pitch?
I didn't buy the claims but I met a few people who tune drums for a living in studios and they all use them.
Well, I'm a new drummer, but a very long time guitarist. And, have spent a lot of time as a professional guitar tech. If you're onstage (or a crowded loud bar), ear fatigue will render you fairly useless around the third song if you're relying on your ears alone.
And if you have to keep more two guitars in tune through a night, you HAVE to use a tuner, not only for reliability, but for speed as well.
But that's 'notes', and drums are 'pitch' (for lack of better phraseology), True. I get that.
So correct my assumption here, but I would have thought that 'pitch' is head tension + shell (diameter, depth, composition etc) and head material/thickness. Is that a fair assessment?
That being the case, I'd be comfortable calling the Drum Dial a 'tuner'. Granted, you have to assign the tension readings to your desired 'pitch' on any given drum.
I bought on one, and used when I was putting together my little start-up kit. After surfing the net to see if I could find what kind of tensions actual drummers preferred (I have a 24 kick, which the DD ref sheet doesn't really give you a start point for) to no real avail, I finally just cranked everything up to the top end of what the reference sheet suggested (using the 22 tension for the kick) and I think it sounds GREAT. Great meaning, to my unpracticed ears it actually sounds like a kit and less like a bunch of pots and pans. Like Rollingstone said, I'm sure it still needs some work. And as I evolve, I'm sure I'll tweak some bits. But it seems to me if I log the tensions, I'll be that much closer every time I swap heads.
I think it'd be a handy tool for experienced folks, but definitely INCREDIBLY useful to us newbies. And I don't see that using the dial automatically precludes training the ear. In fact, I've found it helpful for that as well.
I'm certainly gonna throw it in my workbox whenever I get gig to do all the backline.............
Depends. It can help a lot in diagnosing a mis-tuned drum. I used to find if a drum was a real mess, it was difficult to tell which way a given lug might be out, the tympanic tuners eliminate that confusion. It generally won't get you perfectly in tune, probably due to inconsistencies in the drum, rim and head, and imprecision in the mechanism of the tuner (they vary a bit depending on placement), but it will get you to where you should be able to take over by ear.
Hey Guys
I was just wondering about how many rotations you do on each lug to get the right pitch
for everyone to compare Just list the size of the drum, How many rotations and possibly resonant or batter side.
THANKS!!!!