drumhead61
Gold Member
Putting the dial in the center of the head is not going to work. I sold my dial found it better if I sat down and tweaked on them and as I have heard over and over the practice helps. Keep at it.
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Can you use a drumdial in the center of the head to get an "overall" reading or is this not a good idea?
Unless you have perfect pitch memory you will have a hard time getting your drum back to the same sound when a new head is applied without a drum dial. I tune to get a good sound all the way around the toms and minimize snare resonance. Doing that takes a lot of time. to repeate it would be hell without a drum dial. Having said that it is not the end all and be all. I have had problems like you discussed. The dial gets you close if not very close and the ears go from there.
While I don't doubt there are great tuners buy ear I would bet that the tunings are not reapeatable and snare buzz abounds for most ear tuners.
I finished tuning the drums by ear. The loose rod is not an issue anymore. Each drum appears to be in tune with itself. Now my issue is getting the correct sound.
Can you use a drumdial in the center of the head to get an "overall" reading or is this not a good idea?
I got my Drum Dial about a year ago and I was disappointed with it at first.
I already knew how to tune drums from my 40 years of playing.
I sat down with the Dial and I slowly learned how to use it.
There is a learning curve that one must go through with the drum Dial.
You should first learn how to tune drums without using it.
I can't express the importance of this enough!
I had the same problem with die cast hoops, so I wonder if that is the issue here. I used a drum dial for years and found it to be a great tool for even tuning. The day I bought my superstar with the die cast rims the drum dial became basically useless. One lug would be completely loose and the dial would read that lug as over tight. I have since ditched the drum dial and have gone to just tuning by ear. What a revelation it has been.
I may have found something that might add to my issue of the loose rods. I just bought a package of Evans E-rings. The 10" E-Ring doesn't quite sit on the head properly. There is slack between the E-Ring and the head. It almost looks like the E-Ring is just slightly larger than the hoop and I can't get it to sit flush with the head. When I hit the drum, it buzzes.
Do you think something is wrong with the hoop or E-ring and is this what is giving me the tuning problem. I should also note that the head sits very snug into the hoop.