Question:
Has anyone had any experience with the new Tama drum tuner??? I'm thinking about picking one up, but I wanted to see if anyone knew how it works first.
Answer:
Are you talking about the Tension Watch, or did Tama come up with some other goofy marketing ploy? If you are, forget it. Learn to tune with your ears. It's the only way. Also,inconsistencies in a shell or head can throw off the Tension Watch so that the head will be out of tune when. I've also seen posts from people who have broken them with normal use. This is right. You can't use the tension watch to tune your drums in by only using the readings. You MUST use your ears! They are also rather expensive...too expensive I thought for just a toy. So I built my own. Cost about $20. Having used it for some time I can tell you that it has two main uses. One is to eliminate tension bias in your drums. It's where the drum sounds OK, but in fact the head is loose near one lug and tight at others but is balanced by a crosswise bias tension in the head. With the watch you can even out the tension at each lug so you can have the warm fuzzies, though it doesn't seem to make any difference in the sound (unless one lug is *real* loose). The other main use is to quickly bring your drums close to tuning range without a big hassle. Say you are removing heads for some reason. You just go around the head noting the tension at each lug (hopefully all readings are very close) and write down the average number. Then when you've done what you wanted to do to the drum and are putting the head(s) back on, you just crank it up till you've got the old numbers back. And PRESTO! you've got a perfectly untuned drum :) No, it won't bring it back to exactly the same tuning, but the good news is it will be close. So with a few tweeks by ear and there you are. Let me tell you this is *much* easier than using double keys and counting turns and trying to feel how hard the lugs turn and all that. Still unless you remove heads alot, the Tension Watch is a lot of bux for this convenience. !-- end answer -->
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