Customer Reviews

Drumdial Drum Tuner

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you've ever been frustrated with your drum tuning, the drum dial is for you! It seems like whenever you try to get solid advice on tuning your drums, you get told that "it depends on what YOU want them to sound like" or "drum tuning is an art, not a science". Well, with the drum dial, it IS a science so you can get your drums to sound exactly like you want them to, every time you tune. The drum dial measures the tension of the drumhead at each lug so by getting the tension near each lug at the same drum dial number, your drum is in tune with itself. It's the same thing you're trying to do with the old-fashioned tapping method but you're using your eyes on the dial, instead of your ears. Then, it's just a matter of deciding what tone you like. Personally, I like the tone of my drums using the settings recommended in the drum dial instructions. Some people might like their drums set higher or lower. It doesn't matter because once you get the desired tone, you just write down the drum dial numbers for that drum and you can always get it back to that tone easily. Some purists will say you should just learn to tune the "right way" which is the old-fashioned way. Well, my buddy tunes his electric guitar with an electronic tuner, so why shouldn't I use technology, too? Again, if you've ever struggled to make your drums "sound right" or been frustrated by the whole drum tuning experience, get the drum dial. I'll never be without one again.

Finally I had to faced the truth. I stink at tuning drums. Does the following sound familiar?

You decide it's time to go ahead and tune your kit (lets face it, it's never sounded quite right). Well, you grab your toms, your snare and your bass drum and a tuning key. Typically the snare and bass drum aren't too bad. (personally I would just tune the snare really high for a dry *crack* and I would sorta just wing the bass drum. Heck, I dampen it anyways so getting a *thud* noise wasn't too hard).

Anyways, now it's time for the toms - the dreaded toms. You loosen each lug and begin. You spend a long time tapping next to each lug. You tap away lightly and tune little by little. It seems like every time you tune a lug, the one right next to it goes out of tune (even if you follow the tuning pattern). Some sound really close, but just not quite right. Finally after enough fiddling you just flail your arms and say "close enough!" and move on to the next tom.

You mount your rack toms, put your floor toms back into place and test your kit. Ugh, still doesn't sound quite right. They just don't seem in tune with each other.

If you've gone through this (and I certainly have) then the DrumDial is exactly what you need.

The DrumDial takes the guess work out of tuning your drums.

It's much easier then using your ear (especially if you're tone deaf like myself), but it still takes a little bit of work. It's easiest if you start with finger tight lugs and follow the tuning pattern (if you're not familiar with this then google "drum tuning pattern"). You still have to tinker with each lug a bit because if you tighten one lug quite a bit then the tension by the neighboring lugs will tighten too. So it still takes a little bit of time to tune the drum, but there's no guess-work what-so-ever. Once you have the tension on every lug set, your drum is in perfect tune, no questions asked. Just turn your lugs a little bit at a time and follow the tuning pattern, it will make it even easier.

The first time I tuned my kit with the DrumDial I was amazed. I have a lower end drum kit (ddrum diatribe) and the DrumDial made my kit sound like a million bucks! My toms now sound great together! Before, when I would hit two toms at the same time it would sound awkward, now it sounds perfect.

Even if you are good at tuning by ear it may be worth investing in this, especially if you gig a lot and have to tune your drums in loud places. If you find that you have a hard time tuning because it's so loud where you're at then you can use the DrumDial to tune visually rather then by ear.

I tune my snare at 88/85 (batter/reso), all of my toms are tuned to 75/74 and my bass drum to 72/72 and everything sounds great. The DrumDial even makes tuning fun! Sometimes i'll tune all of my toms to something like 76/72 if I want my toms to have a wacky jungle-like sound to them. The DrumDial allows you to easily experiment with different tuning ideas, which actually makes tuning fun!

If tuning is an issue for you then save yourself a lot of headaches and grab one of these. It's much easier to tune visually then by ear, especially if you're a little bit tone-deaf like myself.

I am mechanically inclined, and I can tune drum heads pretty well. I have a good sense of torque built into my fingertips when tightening drum lugs, and I am able to get them pretty evenly tightened around the head. The DrumDial proves this. But, what I can't always do is bring the drum to the exact same pitch every time I change a head. That's where the DrumDial comes in. If think your toms sound best when tuned to 75, then they'll be there every time. And the top and bottom heads will match in pitch perfectly (if that's what you want). Snares and Bass Drums are pretty easy to get sounding good (in my opinion), but toms can be tricky. If you don't like them to sound dead, or have an annoying ring, or ugly overtones, this very cool gadget might do the trick for you. Of course having a good drum set and the right drum heads to start with helps also... One last thing I think it's important to mention is that the customer service of this company is awesome. I had a slight problem with my DrumDial, and they were impressively responsive about replacing it with a new one.

The reviewer who gave it 3 stars and I ran into the same problem, but once it was solved this thing is amazing. Here's what I put in the comment on his review:

I think I have the (two part) solution; at least it worked for me. Most of the recommended settings (in the booklet) are the low end. The other sheet gives a range. Since each part of the head stretches the whole head to some degree, what I did was tighten them all to finger-tight, then gave each one about a half revolution until they felt equal with a drum key. Then, I found the tightest one with the dial and set them to that. Usually this was at or just above the recommended setting. When I did their method exactly I ran into the same problem you did, where I would get them to read the same but one lug would be super loose and the two adjacent ones really tight. I did my old method halfway, then their method to finish, and it worked.

Also, to clarify how it works (because the description and pictures don't really do it adequately):

It's basically a modified analog point pressure sensor. It weighs a couple pounds, and is a heavy disk with a guage on top, but in the bottom center of the disk it has a metal point that moves up and down. This is attached to the dial, so it reads differences between where the disk sits and where the point at the center of the disk sits. It's very sensitive - a tiny turn on the drum key and it will register. It took a little getting used to, but once I did (and figured out what I described above) it worked great. Also, since each lug slightly affects the pull on all the others, I went around and aimed to bring each lug up to 1 mark below my goal, and then I didn't overshoot and that made things much easier.

Bottom line: Great product, incomplete directions.

This tool is absolutely amazing in the value you receive. I paid $60 but would've been happy paying full retail given the outstanding results I received from using the Drumdial. It made my old Ludwig set sound FANTASTIC! My newer Yamaha Stage Customs blow me away now! Just buy it. You will be pleased. One bit of advice - keep the foam box it comes in to carry and store the unit as it is a precision device. My other advice is to be careful! It is heavy and snare side heads are delicate.... OOPS! Actually, I didn't break one but the weight of the unit did leave a few marks (minor dents) in one of my (3) snare's snare side head. It didn't bother the other two.... To those wives/girlfriends/parents/boyfriends/husbands thinking of getting this as a gift for your beloved drummer - GET IT! DO IT NOW! THEY WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER... really, this thing could save marriages.....

Don't buy the drumdial if you think that you can just dial in random numbers and get perfectly tuned drums. It doesn't work like that. But if you know how to use it and when not to use it, it is an excellent tool.

First, you should understand how to tune a drum. Next, you need to know what pitch you are looking for. Then you get in the ballpark and use the drumdial to make everything precise. Also, you use the drumdial to get those settings instantaneously when you are swapping heads.

Of course, if you have good drummer friends or if you check out a message board and somebody is using your exact same kit and heads, you can ask what settings they like and then you can just dial them in to get that sound.

I've encountered a few things with the dial.

1. The "proper" settings for my 10,12,14,22 are way different than the standard 75/74 settings. My 10" is somewhere like 80/76. 75/74 sounds OK but you really need to first figure out what sound you are looking for and then use the drumdial to "capture" those settings. The drumdial is a tuner only when you know what note it is you are trying to tune for.

2. I never use the drumdial on the bass drum. I finger tighten the bass drum and my perfect pitch is about 1/4 from finger tight on the batter and 1 turn on the resonant. No need for the dial for a bass drum. Also, I use a GMAD so the muffle ring gets in the way. If you use an unmuffled bass drum head, you can use the dial.

3. The drumdial is not effective on your snare side head and it will dent or scratch the thin film. Just learn to tune the snare side by ear. I crank mine way up anyway. The dial doesn't seem to go past 81 on the snare side even when I keep cranking it. As you place the dial around your snare side, the plunger will leave little indents in your head.

4. Take care to place the dial on the head and lift it off gently. Do not slide it around or it will mark your heads up and leave little rings. Your toms will start to look like one of those Sabian Ozone crashes with the circles.

5. The drumdial will give you weird reading with high quality 2.3mm hoops and diecast. Strangely it works very well with cheaper 1.6mm hoops. I used to have an Export kit and it tuned very well with the dial. I then bought a used Session Custom with 2.3mm Super Hoops and I would get strange readings. For example on a 10" tom, two opposite lugs would be rather tight but then another two opposite lugs would be barely hanging on; but the drum would be in tune with itself. I thought the hoop was bent or the bearing edge was out of round but that is not the case. What you need to do is manually tune the drum and then get in the ballpark range and then do 1/8 turns using the dial until you reach the magic numbers.

I am not the greatest tuner in the world. Lucky for me, I keep browsing various message boards and users share their settings with each other. I found someone who used my exact same kit and head combination and I asked him if I could have his settings because he had a youtube video and his kit sounded awesome. Initially I had been tuning my resonant heads higher than my batters to kill some sustain but then I used his settings and Wham! my kit sounded 100x better. For situations like this, the dial is indispensable. My point is that you need to be familiar with tuning and what drums should sound like before you buy this. It's a great tool but just don't expect to dial your toms to 75/74 and your snare to 85/80 and get great sound. Sometimes great sound comes with experimenting and greatly tweaking those numbers.

I have a stock Tama Imperialstar with factory heads. Out of the box, it sounded very ordinary. No matter how I tried to tune the heads, using careful finger-tightening and painstakingly whacking the heads, I could never get the sound I liked. I put on Edge Control rings on the toms and snare, and still did not get that full, rich resonance. Enter Drumdial (I chose over Tama TW100). I followed the recommended tensions for the heads as included in the booklet. It took maybe 10-12 minutes to tune both batter and resonant sides of my 5-piece kit.

The result: a very warm,rich and surprisingly musical sound from the toms, snare and bass drum (using only factory heads with additional EC rings for the toms and snare). No overtones, no "off-tune" sound. My kit now sounds as if I had put on EVANS G2s or EC2s. Even the stock bass drum head(which is only single-ply), sounds so much richer and deeper! The only other upgrade on the kit itself is placing a Kickport on the bass drum, for an even fatter, lower thump. One word of advice, as the recommended tension settings come with a range; for example, the bass drum batter head should be tuned to 75-80, I would choose closer to 75 for a "fatter" sound. Be sure to write down the tension settings on a piece of paper as soon as you hit on the sound that you like, as obviously, you'd need to tune the heads after some amount of playing. Of course, you should probably play with the tension settings yourself, and adjust the tone according to your liking. Now, if I could get some drum mics....

PROS: Quite hefty, feels solid and well-made. Very easy to follow directions.
CONS: None really, except that you have to keep this tool in its foam case as you don't want it to get tension sensor out of calibration.

Bottom line: I would rather use this than tune by ear. It will save a ton of time; besides, Drumdial guarantees reproducibility of the same sound/tension each time you change heads. As one reviewer said, worth it's weight in gold!

I used the Drumdial Drum Tuner to check the tension on my banjo head. I had always checked the tightness of the head by the resistance of the wrench, (I had no torque wrench), and I went by the sound of the banjo. After getting the Drumdial Drum Tuner, I checked the head tension again; I didn't need to adjust anything, as the numbers were uniform all the way around and they were in the proper range, (I got those numbers online somewhere, I don't remember where). So, maybe I didn't need this tuner, (I think it is a bit expensive), but at least I know where I'm at with the head tension.

A precision made instrument that takes the guesswork out of drum tuning. Once you find a tension that works, you can repeat it. I have probably never tuned two-headed drums properly before. It also ensures that the head is equally tensioned across the head. The tuner makes it easy. Includes recommended tension by drum size. The recommendations are a good starting point to find the tension you like. Be sure to keep notes of the tension numbers that work for you!

This drum tuner allows you to tune your drums to the axact same pitch every time. The only thing I dislike is having to lift the unit off the heads even when you are increasing the pitch. I tried this and found that the reading was different after lifting and repositioning the unit agian.
It is well worth the price.