dirtyclinic
Member
I don't have either but I want to buy one. I am not very experienced with tuning drums. Which one should I get? The more expensive one is $100 which is not a problem.
The Tune-Bot clips to the rim of the drum so that you can use both hands while tuning. No $5 app is going to do that for you.Not the question you asked ... but there are $5 apps for your phone that work better than tunebot.
Perhaps, but odds are that your drums will sound suboptimal the entire time.I woulkd learn to tune by ear and save enough money to buy an entire set of heads. With time, the same time it takes to learn to use a bot, you can lern by ear.
This.I've owned both and the Tune-Bot is an order of magnitude better than the Drum Dial.
I'm not in the "learn to tune by ear" camp at all. The fact is that the majority of drummers are not very good at tuning (if you believe what they tell you themselves) and it doesn't seem to matter how long they've been doing it. It's important to point out that your drums will sound lousy the whole time you're "figuring it out" by ear so I'm not sure how that's appealing.
When we get new drummers on here asking for advice on buying a drum kit, we never tell them to buy the cheapest, nastiest kit they can find and stick with that until they deserve better. We try to help them find something that sounds good from the start. Telling someone to learn to tune by ear is essentially dooming them to crappy sounding drums until they "figure it out".
A Tune-Bot doesn't do the work for you. You still have to install the heads and hoops and twist the tension rods just the right amount. The Tune-Bot simply tells you when the lugs are pitched evenly, not tensioned evenly. You discover a little bit of theory (intervals etc.) and then you get to hear what that sounds like in reality. As a bonus, your drums sound good the entire time you're learning.
If you took away my Tune-Bot tomorrow, I'd still be a thousand times better at tuning than I was before I started using it. My ears have been trained and I understand the mechanics perfectly now.
I'll leave you with this. I have tuned many, many drum kits for people who were happy with the way the sounded before, but curious to see if the Tune-Bot could make them better. Without fail they always say "WOW!! That's a lot better than I had them. Thanks!"
That's true - the clip is very important, IMO.The Tune-Bot clips to the rim of the drum so that you can use both hands while tuning. No $5 app is going to do that for you.
I vote for neither. Drums aren't melodic. They can easily be tuned (or tensioned) by ear, provided you aren't afraid to trust your own judgement, which is informed and refined through exposure and practice. In the words of Phil Rudd, "Tuning is a feel thing. If you can't feel it, you can't tune it." That sums up my philosophy on the topic.
If you're bent on getting a device, disregard my statements. I probably represent a fading school of thought in drumming. I kind of like it that way.
The Tune-Bot clips to the rim of the drum so that you can use both hands while tuning. No $5 app is going to do that for you.
I only consider the "note" to be an accurate audible indicator of the tension. It's not at all about being melodic, which I agree with you completely on. There are several reasons for tuning a particular way; intervals between toms, sustain, attack, stick feel. Once I get my toms where I want them, using the notes - or frequencies - for each head (saved in the tune-bot) saves a lot of time.