Tune Bot - Worthwhile or Not?

As a follow-up to my previous posts on this topic:

this morning I was in a rush and had to load up and leave quickly. I clocked myself at changing a Bass drum head and bringing it in tune within 3 min., same thing for a 10 in. tom but in 2.5 min., same for a difficult 12 in. tom.

I simply used my saved presets in the Tune Bot iPhone App.
 
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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.
 
Tuning the snare proved more challenging than tuning the toms.

I have never been able to get the TuneBot to read the snare side head correctly. Once you get close to that 400Hz range, the whole thing goes wonky. It's not a big deal to me as that head usually is done by feel anyway. As long as it makes a nice "ping" sound when slapping it, its good to me.
 
I have never been able to get the TuneBot to read the snare side head correctly. Once you get close to that 400Hz range, the whole thing goes wonky. It's not a big deal to me as that head usually is done by feel anyway. As long as it makes a nice "ping" sound when slapping it, its good to me.


The Resotune isn't able to deduct the snare side either.

It's exactly as you describe above, it goes wonky, but then the snare side is very easy to discern with ears and not as important to get clear.
 
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.

Like you, a couple things I've noticed:

1. When clearing a head, small turns at adjacent lugs can help. Also, I tend to get better results tuning in smaller increments all around the drum than by making large adjustments to one lug and then having other lugs affected.

2. The tunebot helps me eliminate snare buzz (especially at lower snare tunings) by identifying sympathetic frequencies from my toms. For instance, if the bottom head of one of my toms is tuned too close to the top head of my snare all I have to do is make a few adjustments and no more buzz.

3. The tunebot is great for documenting tunings that you like on other people's kits. I've found some cool starting points from friends drums and house kits. Also great if you're playing someone else's kit and you want to return it the way it was before you messed with it.

BTW, I see there's a new version of iDrumTune out now. Has anyone had a chance to check it out?
 
I'm new to using a Tune-bot - ordered it a few days ago, and I'm using it for the first time today.

I wish I bought one years ago. Nothing replaces your ears, but I am finding it to be an extremely useful reference.

As long as you use the Filter feature, this thing *hears* fine - and helps get the drum tuned quickly and evenly. Love this thing.
 
I like my tune-bot simply because I can track, and keep track of the value on a piece of paper.

And recently, I have been slowly loosening my drum heads, to see if I like the sound better.
 
I'm new to using a Tune-bot - ordered it a few days ago, and I'm using it for the first time today.

I wish I bought one years ago. Nothing replaces your ears, but I am finding it to be an extremely useful reference.

As long as you use the Filter feature, this thing *hears* fine - and helps get the drum tuned quickly and evenly. Love this thing.

My experience as well since I bought one a couple of years ago. The Filter feature is the only I'm able to get consistent readings. Using this has definitely helped tuning on all the different drums.
 
There are a lot of good posts in this thread. Like many others, I've been tuning for decades and LOVE the tune bot. Saves time, and for me it *increased experimentation.

Speeds things up and helped to teach my ear even more. I wish I had it from the beginning. I don't agree that it would hurt a new drummer learning to tune. I think it would speed up the learning process. Man, when I was first learning I didn't know what a good drum sounded like. So I was just guessing. I was 8 years old with no other drummers in the family to get help from. My drums sounded less than ideal for too many years to count because I didn't have anyway of knowing what they should sound like...or could sound like.

If I had a tune bot then? my goodness...it would have sped up my ear training exponentially.

So after finally wasting years as a young kid learning how to tune, I finally got there. But even having my ears where they need to be, I find the tune bot to be worth every penny. And those reasons have already been listed previously in this thread.

I just wanted to give another +1 to the tune bot.
 
Resotune update:

I got the thing with the extremely complicated instructions, but it's fairly simple.
Thanks for the mention
It works well but it's big and cumbersome.
RESOTUNE II is smaller and lighter than RESOTUNE I. I experimented with making it even smaller and could not get effective head coupling required for good convergence during clearing.
If the drum isn't level you have to hold it in place, however it's also easy to use. Super easy.

Using "find both" tells you what the tuning of the drum is set at.
Using "tune drum" tells the fundamental lowest note on the drum.
Using "tune lug" is like the tunebot. It tells the lug note the drum is at.

You pick a note +/- 25, 50, or 75 cents and tune the drum until that setting lights up, then you "clear" the head with the fine tuning setting.
Just a minor point, "lug clearing" is not fine tuning the pitch of the lug resonance but fine matching the lug tension to be precisely the same as all the other lugs at the existing note pitch. Clearing the lugs is a separate step performed after tuning to a desired note pitch so does not change that pitch.
Clearing the head feature is very odd but seems to really work. It's just an extremely fine tuning, but that little bit makes the drums very lively.
It is difficult to describe what causes the "clear" sound. My sense is that not only agreement at the lug resonant pitch (like other tuners do), but the higher overtones are also in closer agreement for less chaotic dissonance between the several slightly different higher overtones. Hard to describe but you will recognize the "clear" sound when you hear it.
There are lug settings for extra sensitivity if you hold down the "tune lug" button for a second and there is also an extra sensitive "clear" function of you hold down the "clear" button for a second. This extra sensitivity is good for snare drums.
Holding down the "Tune Lug" button will tell it to search up to next higher overtone resonance. An advanced function most will never need or use.

Pressing the "Clear" button again (momentarily) while in clear mode will shift to a higher resolution clear mode. Yes this higher clear sensitivity is useful for high tension drums (like snare drums), less useful for lower tension toms and kick.
Overall, for someone like me who never cared for using a tuning machine and really couldn't give a hoot if the drum is "perfect", it's pretty good!
It will save a lot of time and there's no tapping on the head. It shoots sound into the drum and uses phase matching for the tuning.
Yes "clear mode" reads the phase shift of the standing wave occurring in the drumhead at the lug resonance pitch when individual lugs are tensioned. This measures the impact of individual lug tension and even tells you what direction to adjust the individual lug being measured to match the others.
It's automatic and also has a save setting feature. I would probably just write the tuning on the head and not bother with saving the settings, but I'm lazy.

Very accurate. More accurate than ears if that really matters.

Oh, and the cosmetic flaw seems to be a couple of plastic bumps under the control panel, which could probably be fixed when it's time to change the batteries.

Sorry about the late response but I just noticed this post and wanted to amplify a few minor points. Thank you for your kind comments.

John Roberts
Circular Science
 
Picked up the Tune Bot Gig. I can tune pretty well without one but thought I would give it a try. I went by the settings suggested for the size drums I'm using. Got a bit frustrated at first but then got all lugs in tune. I then set up kit and was very happy with results. Can't believe how such small turns of a drum key will make such a big difference.
 
Depending on the number of plies, and the tuning, high, med, etc. small turns or even twitches can make the world of difference. I sold a guy a cymbal on Craigslist and he came by and we talked about tuning, and getting the lugs the same, and I was turning one screw and he said, "you didn't turn it" and I said I put pressure on it, and did it again. he was in jaw dropping mode.
 
There’s one thing that has me puzzled! I find lugs that sound way off at times, but TuneBot says they are spot on. If I follow TuneBot the drum will sound amazing, but if I follow my ears, it sounds out of tune. Not exactly sure what goes on there or how many have come across the same, but the thing definitely hears something I’m not!
 
LOL. you just sold 10 more Tune Bots. Everyone doesn't have a perfect ear.
 
There’s one thing that has me puzzled! I find lugs that sound way off at times, but TuneBot says they are spot on. If I follow TuneBot the drum will sound amazing, but if I follow my ears, it sounds out of tune. Not exactly sure what goes on there or how many have come across the same, but the thing definitely hears something I’m not!

I see that occasionally. Although it never interferes with the overall end result.

I think it is hearing at other locations on the head. When that happens, try to put your hand lightly on the other side, and see if it reads different results.

I was thinking that another tool might help - a pacman overlay. A circle of head material, with one piece of the pie cut out. Then you'd rotate that opening to the lug you were measuring. That might quiet down the other lug locations and get truer readings.
 
Depending on the number of plies, and the tuning, high, med, etc. small turns or even twitches can make the world of difference. I sold a guy a cymbal on Craigslist and he came by and we talked about tuning, and getting the lugs the same, and I was turning one screw and he said, "you didn't turn it" and I said I put pressure on it, and did it again. he was in jaw dropping mode.

Yup. Very tiny turns generate significant differences.

I always thought it would be great if we could have gear ratios like guitar tuners have - so the small turns translate to even smaller turns of the lug. That would make it easier and more precise.
 
One more comment.

I'm fairly new to the tune bot. Between the tune bot, and some new heads*** I put on the kit recently, my wife told me after my gig this weekend -
"that's the best your kit ever sounded. I never heard anything close to that before. It was awesome."

Happy happy.

_________________________________________

***Aquarian black DeJohnette heads - tuned with a tune bot.
 
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Picked up the Tune Bot Gig. I can tune pretty well without one but thought I would give it a try. I went by the settings suggested for the size drums I'm using. Got a bit frustrated at first but then got all lugs in tune. I then set up kit and was very happy with results. Can't believe how such small turns of a drum key will make such a big difference.

There's a learning curve at first but you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll zip around the kit once you get the hang of it.

I've been experimenting with the Artist Tunings posted on the Tune-Bot website (and mobile app) and I've liked every one that I've tried, some more than others, of course.

I think that my Stage Customs are versatile enough to respond well to pretty much any tuning style so I'm simply enjoying all of the different tones and intervals that each style brings. It's simply a pleasure to play well tuned drums.
 
I thought I'd toss in my 2¢ on this thread because I bought a Tune Bot, and at this point would not want to be without it.

I should mention that I have a good ear - I'm both a singer, and a trumpet player, so listening for intonation is something I've been doing for decades - I can tune just fine by ear if I have to.

The one thing that I appreciate about the Tune Bot that doesn't seem to be mentioned much, is when it comes to getting the correct relationship between the batter and resonant heads of a drum.

I can tune a head by ear no problem - that's easy. However, you can have two heads on a drum that are tuned great by themselves, but if the relationship between the batter and resonant is bad, the drum is going to sound terrible anyway. Tune Bot takes the guesswork out of it - once you know the correct relationship that works with whatever heads you choose to use on a particular drum, you can repeat those results EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Every time I play out somewhere people compliment me on how good my drums sound, and I have the Tune Bot to thank for that.
 
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