Tune Bot - Worthwhile or Not?

JustJames

Platinum Member
My approach is to tune and leave alone. If a drum sounds “off” I’ll investigate and resolve but I’m not a compulsive tuner. I can get a drum sounding good, and get my drums sounding good relative to each other, but I don’t feel like I have a “method”, other than to tune top and bottom to the same note, with a pleasing interval between each.

Part of me – no idea which part – thinks that if I were able to objectively measure what I’m doing, I’d be able to get my drums sounding even better, and would be more consistent in my approach. What has your motivation been in getting (or not getting) a drum tuner? Have you got your drums sounding better?

If there is another tool that does the same job that you use in preference, clue me up on that too.

Disclaimer: Yes I play Mapex Saturns, but it seems that even they require tuning. I know, I couldn't believe it either.
 
The consensus on this are as wide and varied as the 'big kit v small kit' or the 'trad v matched grip' debates.

Me? I wouldn't spend that amount of cash on something I can already do myself.

Plenty of others will agree. Plenty of others won't.

You simply need to work out the value to you. Not something a forum is best equipped to deal with unfortunately.
 
Pocket, as ever, you type sense.

I'm just looking to see other peeps' experiences.
 
Save your money, JJ. I tune by ear, always have, so no need for a bot or dial. Call me an old school fart. :)

As for getting a more accurate timbre note or increasing resonance using a bot, I doubt you'd notice a difference.
 
Part of me – no idea which part – thinks that if I were able to objectively measure what I’m doing, I’d be able to get my drums sounding even better, and would be more consistent in my approach. What has your motivation been in getting (or not getting) a drum tuner? Have you got your drums sounding better?

If there is another tool that does the same job that you use in preference, clue me up on that too.

Disclaimer: Yes I play Mapex Saturns, but it seems that even they require tuning. I know, I couldn't believe it either.

Tension watch.

To me: Tension watches aren't really for tuning your drums, they exist to document a tuning you like so that you can implement to the same thing later.

Consider the scenario where you record something. Two weeks later, you get a call to redo a fill. Since the tech was smart enough to jot down the tensions during the last session, there's no time spent futzing with tunings trying to get a match.

Consider the scenario where you're a drum tech for some famous drummer on tour. You need to make certain the drums are sounding exactly the same every night.

It's a great tool for that kind of stuff.

Tune bot / phone app

Good for recording songs where the toms need to provide a strong notes in a specific key. You can use them to echo the core melody, you can use them as an in-tune ostinato. You basically have a 2-4 note (loud) xylophone.

Handy when you need to emulate timpani with your floor toms (Play the intro to "2001, a Space Odyssey"... Or "George of the Jungle")

Useful in situations where you're trying to track down interference between the snare and other instruments. IE, If a snare rings like a bell in Bflat, and the song is in Amaj.



As far as being tools to learn to tune drums, both devices haven't really helped me at all. In my measly 3 years learning to play, I do not believe they have saved me the week that it took to learn to use them. The scenarios where they would be useful have come up almost, but not quite, never.
 
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I bought one and will say it was worth the money to me. I still tune by ear and 99.9% of the time I'm dead on when getting the tension on each lug correct. The tune bot shows you if any of the lugs are not the same. It will also save a certain amount of tunings for each drum which can be a great tool for love gigs. For example ..if you have a regular place that you gig, you can take some time to get the sound you want from your drums in that room and save it to the tune bot. That way the next time you come in to that gig, the settings are right there on the bot instead of trying to guess what you did previously. It saves time for me for playing multiple gigs that need different tunings for the room.

On top​ of that, you can look up all kinds of different tuning presets that pro drummers use with their tune bot to experiment on your own drums.
 
I got a tune bot a few years back and find that it is a very useful tool. You can tune your drums to any interval/pitch you want, including measurements for the longest and shortest sustain. Once you find a tuning(s) that you like, you can easily tune your drums the next time around.

And yes I could do it by ear, but the TB takes the guess work out of it.

Worth every penny in my opinion.
 
I think the TB is a very useful tool, but in order to make it really work for you, IMO you gotta be able to tune by ear and have a good feel of how turning one rod affects the rest of the head/drum.

But for me, it's invaluable for recreating my exact favorite tunings for recording purposes.
 
I use a Tama drum dial and the plus for me is speed and consistency of tuning. I can tune by ear, and did do that for years, but the accuracy of the dial just makes it quicker and easier to replicate in a gig situation if I break a head. Its not big or clever, simply personal choice, and it has not made me less of a drummer, despite what some might think.
 
Those tools can be useful, of course (like pointed out e.g. by keep it simple). Especially for those people who have serious problems with tuning by ear (not everyone is able to hear really well all those notes, intervals & overtones. Just ask my wife). In my case, I trust my (pretty good) ears. Worked for me so far. Drums sing, sound good, compliment the music. :)
 
Not sure if there is a scenario whereby you are called back into a studio to do just 1 fill? Surely you would notice when you play it back?

Even when my toms have been out of tune, they've still recorded OK, just sound a bit deader and flatter which sometimes matches the sound I want. I thought tune-safe would help but it doesn't, my prolites go out of tune as much as any other drums, tune-safe my @rse.

A freshly tuned tom sounds lovely, but I guess my drums aren't as susceptible to being out of tune too much as I have them tuned fairly low so they go flappy very quickly anyway (using Evans Onyx heads) and you get a boat load more attack when they do. So mine evolve over their tuning and I use them until the head is wrinkly then I re-tune them. But that is not a professional opinion, that's just how I roll within my own amateur situation

Mostly I tune by ear and then use drum dial to fine-tune.
 
I spent around 3 years saying the tunebot would be a waist of money. I can tune drums OK without it, yea (that ole school mentality). I could buy a splash with that money. One day after fidgeting with a Saturn tom for an hour and not being satisfied, my wife said "hold up you can spend $2000 + on a Drum set but cant buy a $70 drum tuner, dont guitar player use tuners". So I bought one and it is one of the better investment's I have made. You dont have to get the $100 one, the $70 T.B Gig is all you need. It just does not store your settings. I got the original but I just write down my preferred tuning's. I mean why not, you can find a drums sweet spot and then have that reference setting at your fingertips. I am glad I learned what I did without it, but now having that combination of ear and T.Bot readily available is nice. There is a fine line between old fashion and hard headed. I am sure there are plenty guys on here that dont need one but as many threads and videos that have been made to aid people in tuning. There are still a lot of Drummers that lack tuning skills and it is nothing to be ashamed of. I get comments all the time on my Drum sound and some of that is the fact that I tune with the help of a T.B
 
I bought one as a new drummer.. used to maybe 3 times.. has sat in a drawer since.. so no, i don't think it was worth buying. The only thing that i found it useful was in matching lugs to each other to get rid of overtones.. and i found that by ear i am usually within 1-2hz and over time have gotten faster and faster at tuning, if i kept using a tunebot i would not have learned how to tune.
 
I use to tune by ear-because none of this stuff was invented yet lol, but now I use a drum dial and a pitch app. The drum dial works great for cheap kits to clear head to itself and I bought the pitch app cause my hearing is so bad and I never know what I hear in aids is reality.
 
I bought one as a new drummer.. used to maybe 3 times.. has sat in a drawer since.. so no, i don't think it was worth buying. The only thing that i found it useful was in matching lugs to each other to get rid of overtones.. and i found that by ear i am usually within 1-2hz and over time have gotten faster and faster at tuning, if i kept using a tunebot i would not have learned how to tune.
I agree, as a new Drummer a Tunebot will just further complicate the tuning process.
 
It's probably not worth the money if others say their ears are more accurate.

I suspect it wouldn't tune my nice drums well at all because my nice drums are very wild. It would probably tune my crappy drums really well because those drums are either bad sounding or not-so-bad sounding. One turn of the rod with the crappy drums brings them to life, but one turn of the rod with the nice drums doesn't really make them sound bad unless it's really crazy out of tune.

If the ResoTune was a little bit cheaper I would spend more money on one of those before a TuneBot.
 
You should learn to tune by ear for a multitude of reasons.

But, as stated, there are situations where a tool is useful. It's also nice to have to just quickly get the right tension when changing heads.

Good tool, but don't let it keep you from fooling around and tringing yours ears when you're at home and have the time.

In any case. You can't rely on numbers to sound good. It should be the other way around. When you find something you like, then you notate the numbers as reference.
 
What has your motivation been in getting (or not getting) a drum tuner? Have you got your drums sounding better?

Watching the videos of the Tune Bot in use has simply confirmed that my approach was on the money.

Having a Tune Bot would help to document what tensions work for a given drum, at certain pitches. That information would most certainly increase your skills as a drum tuner, and probably you would not need to use the Tune Bot anymore. But learning to use it would be good experience.

In the studio, it's sometimes desirable to bring the pitch of the toms up or down to suit the key of the song. Having spent time bringing your drums up or down, trying out different pitches and tensions, would help to speed up this process, even if you were just using your ear (and a piano or guitar).
 
I know how to tune. I have a tunebot and I love it. No screwing around with a head change, 20 minutes and my entire kit is back to exactly where it was.

Consistency is the strength of any of the tuners. I know the intervals between my toms is even. I use a 6 piece kit so it's nice always having even spacing.
 
As a relative Noob compared to most of the regulars here on DW, I thought I would give my 2 penneth. My observations are certainly very different to Icetech's.

When I purchased my Mapex Armory kit, I considered getting a Tune Bot at the same time but decided against it. 2 weeks later following numerous attempts to get my new drums sounding 'right' I found myself back in the store handing over the cash for a TB.

It was a good move IMO. There is a lot of misinformation out there on tuning methods and I simply got confused and incredibly frustrated that I could not get things sounded as I wanted to or tell why one drum was ringing more than the others. All this in spite of the 'patented SoniClear bearing edges' ;-)

As someone who was completely new to tuning acoustic drums, the TB was a godsend. I was able to get things sounding as I wanted to and, as importantly, develop my understanding of the relation between batter / reso tensions and how one lug being slightly out can make all the difference.

At the end of the day it's a piece of tech that would be (and is) seen by many more trained ears as a cop out. However, the point of tech is to make life easier. To this end the TB helped me massively by guiding me through tuning, removing frustrations, educating me, training my ears and, most importantly, getting my drums sounding like an instrument that I wanted to get behind and play.

The 'training' element is important. When I bought my TB, this was the objective that I kept in mind. My thinking was "This will make life easier but ultimately I don't want to rely on it". Now I am at the stage where I can tune my snares easily by ear and hardly rely on the TB. On toms I try and tune by ear and only use the TB if something sounds out. It's become more of a trouble shooting device than something I now rely on to get my drums sounding good.
 
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