thoughts...

My first though is that maybe some drummers are "tone deaf" and tuning might be problem for them,so using a tuning dial helps them evenly tune there drums to what the machine is saying is correct.i have a friend,a fellow vintage drum collector,who stops by to shoot the breeze and geek-out on drums and everytime he comes,he shows up with a snare drum for me to tune for him!!!no mayyer how many times i show him,he always want ME to tune his drum...which leads me to believe that maybe he is tone deaf,or just lazy:-)...i personally love experimenting with different heads and hearing all the notes i go through dialing in toms and snares...but like you,i never used a tuning dial...i hear note in everything i hit or play...tables,metal,the dog house,counter-tops,coffee cups,even the steering wheel of my car:-)

And yes...mylar with continue to stretch and pull uneven and tension radically until the next time we tune are tubbies,so listening and hearing notes and tones are far more interesting and important to us as drummers/musicians and help us develope and hone our skills in making the music go BANG !!!:2Cents::2Cents:

But...this is just my take on the drum dial...do it with skill not with a machine...:-) ok ...more Coffee Break2

After seeing a post regarding these "drum dials" here on VDF I went to the manufacturer's websites and viewed several You-tube demos about them. My conclusions are (nothing profound):

1. They do nothing to help tune to a certain pitch (note). You must still do that yourself...by ear or pitch pipe or whatever.

2. Once the desired pitch is achieved they do, in theory, help to get the drum "in tune with itself" by equalizing the head tension at all lugs. First, if you have any "ear" at all, this is rather simple to do without a drum dial by just tapping around the edge. Second, I'm not sure that equal lug tension alone necessarily puts the drum in tune with itself. I suspect that other things (bearing edge condition, drum roundness, etc.) also influences the total sound of a drum.

3. If after you have the drum tuned "perfectly" you write down the tension measurements for each lug as shown on the drum dial it MIGHT help to recreate that same tuning in the future...maybe (???).

All-in-all, they are an interesting device. If they were cheaper I would get one just to play with, but I still believe in the "tune it by ear" method.

The drum dial is a nice tool, but, it will not replace proper tuning or having good "ears" for tuning. For studio, (after putting on fresh heads and stretching them out) I use the drum dial to get the heads even. Then, I will tune by ear. From my experience, it's just a real quick way to get a great drum tone for the session/producer. Using a drum dial for a live show will not work, so, learning to tune drums by ear is soooo important.

O-lugs, I don,t know if you are an older drummer or younger drummer. I,am an old guy drummer and when I was gigging on a regular basis & with the same band I and our keyboard player had a drum tuning session before each gig. I used the old method of tapping about an inch away from the lugs. We used a "G" note and an "E" note to tune my kit. My drums always tuned themselves somewhere near these notes. Crazy Huh!

In my old age,( think hearing loss), I bought a drum dial because I did some studio work and the sound guy recommended it.

I tuned my "Vintage" ludwigs with the dial at about an 80/85 on the dial like the instructions said. 80s (to me ) was high and when I backed down to 70-75 the kit sounded like the old days.

The problem comes in when you replace with newer heads as they will need retuning a couple of times to settle them down.

So in my opinion I now,( having used the dial), use the old method with heads having been used for awhile, and do the initial tuning with new heads using the dial. I was totally suprised to find how close I could tune the older heads at 70-75 without the dial. So the dial is just another tool I can use to set the initial tuning when replacing heads both Reso & batter sides and I have to say the heads being produced today stay in tune pretty good without touching them.

Just my two cents: TOM

My two,

It could be a great way to show the difference between the tention of the two heads. Some people tune bottom tighter than top heads, and you could guage the drums that way,..to make all your drums have the same difference !! But then I have a very senitive tourque wrech in my tool box !!

hi and good luck with the tuning but im like most old school drummers and hear notes every thing i hit like Quasimodo maybe a little deaf but you hear the vibrations like a old hammond b3 so i alwasy check the heads before i play and during breaks there not supposed to move as much as old calskins did but thats why they caled the old heads weather kings

Oh, I'm not looking for a "How to Tune a Drum" advice or anything like that. I'm an old schooler, too. I know how to get the most sound from a drum and all that. I was asking the question because of the fact that I read so much about "even tension" being crucial to proper tuning. (And yes, "tuning" isn't the proper word, but we all know what I'm talking about in general.)

I speculate that what may start out as even, will become UNeven upon the first few seconds of actual playing. So that, by the end of the set, the Drum Dial, etc. will not read as being evenly tensioned. And no matter how many times you re-tension, the plastic is going to deform as soon as you hit it.

In short, there is no consistent way to make a drumhead not deform....unless you play extremely softly...and even then, the plastic will still deform some.

I use one strictly as a reference point it is a speedy way to get the drum to where i will tune it properly..

You are correct o-lugs. I thought you wanted some responses to the use of the drum dials along with a visual demonstration, which I can't do. I would never had used the dial or a lug tension key except they were a recommendation..

I do believe everything has its place as do the drum dials. Its just an easy way to tune drums but only when we have time to use it, as in a studio setting. I would use a tension key on a gig, but nothing will beat tuning by ear in my opinion.

I also believe its all for naught because "just get them close?" and the producer/sound man will take care of them "now-a-days".

FWIW: TOM