I have a drum dial thingy key. Not the one with the big honking dial on it - It's got the small wheel thingy with numbers on it.

Anyhow, I found it completely useless on vintage drums, or in my world, vintage Kent drums.

They might work on newer drums, with those sharp, new bearing edges but I find that on MY vintage drums, the tensions per lug are not always the same across the board. In some cases, you'll have some lugs which feel lose while others are tight. This could be due to many things - Bearing edges which are not perfect, lugs which are not perfect, and of course hoops, which are not perfect.

I just use my ears and my hands to guide me. Just my $0.02 on the subject.

Bob Neary, inventor of the Neary Drum Torque Wrench was a teacher at the school I went to in Nova Scotia and was my Sunday school teacher. He kicked me out of Sunday school for acting like an idiot. He was the first drummer I ever saw playing live, at a local club.

Around 1975ish, he phoned me up and said he wanted to come over and show me the thing he invented. Bob was a thin guy with eyes that were popping out of his head - very intense. So he came over to band practice in my basement. I remember him telling me that my Gretsch floor tom should be whatever, I'm making this up but let's say 14 lbs, and when he checked mine it was like .7 lbs and he kept saying that there was something wrong with my drum, that it couldn't be right. The band members thought he was nuts because the drum sounded fine.

Then I saw him at a rock/top 40 gig with his new set of Rogers and all his drums were so fricken' tight it was crazy. His floor tom was higher than a typical 8x12. Ping!

Bob was a very nice, sweet person but I thought then and do now that it's a tool I didn't desire. I like tensioning (not tuning, that's for pianos) drums. It's musical. I wouldn't be surprised if you went up to one of your heroes when his drums sounded great that you'd find the torque readings were out to lunch.

Yea I gotta agree,

The same point is coming up, I use one of those Evans torque drum keys, but these things are just a basis to get a good starting point really. you have to work with them for a while to get your own method, but at the end of the day you gotta get the tuning you want from your ears cos your ears dont lie...

or at least they shouldn't

here's an awesome repository of info - http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/index.html

I've never used one , so I can't say.

Here's a related tale, a friend of mine had a favourite drummer and tried to find his "sound', and tuned his kit to sound like his.

Years later he got a drum dial and lo & behold his favourite drummer endorsed the dial w/ his own specs in the pamphelet.

So he checked his kit w/ the dial and the specs matched, weird eh?

I'll just add....learning to tune by ear is tough, no doubt about it. It takes time and effort but once you get it....it becomes second nature. Just like playing, there's no substitute for practice and experience. Believe me, every one who can tune well started out with the same frustrations....they just stuck with it.

I have one and I like it. I never take it to the gig. I just use it for initial tuning when I put new heads on. Also good for tuning back to a previous setting. I fine tune by ear to adjust to different rooms. A handy tool. I still drive a stickshift though.

You've heard no doubt countless times you have to find the drums "sweet spot". It is true, there is a sweet spot and when you find it, you'll know it, your ears will tell you right away. I borrowed a Drumdial and used it on my vintage Slingerland kit. Using the recommended starting points on the Drumdial instructions, it wasn't even close to the sweet spot on any of the drums. It is an interesting tool, one I imagine would have gotten me onto tuning at a young age. I trust my ears, tuning can definitely be frustrating at times, especially on vintage drums where tolerances, bearing edges etc. can be somewhat liberal in precision. But as said in previous posts, it's a learning experience, more you do it the better you get at it.

Regards

DonS

Had one, tried it, sold it..... as stated before by you other guys they might be a good starting point, but i think it's important to find "the sweet spot" (thanks DonS) by ear and really get the drum to sound like an Instrument, not like a mathematical formula.

I have a colluege here who uses a drum dial and is really "correct" with his tunings, checking them almost every day with the dial, thinking that this is "the master atomic clock" by which all drums must work the same. he even tunes all his 12" toms (1 yamaha, 2 tama, 1 pearl...) the same way using the same adjustment... WHAT??? Hurting What about individual sound of drums here? and he wouldn't even give it a try to just go all the way by ear.

I for my part of course like to have my drums tuned in a kind of a chord, or harmonic connection, but if you have a great (modern or vintage) drumset, why use a "device" if you have ears..... well... my thoughts

well put.

That's reason #zillion I don't like tight miking on kits - it's one instrument... imagine recording Paul McCartney's bass, separte strings on 4 or 5 channels so we could "fix" it later - like he didn't get it right the first time.

true! i have a little home recording studio myself. when i record drums, i always use a kick and a snare mike, then 3 overhead and room microphones. also toms microphones, BUT only to be able to add some punch to the toms when suitable for the music. most of the time they are switched off though ...