Drumdial Drum Tuner Description:
With the Drumdial Drum Tuner, timpani, snare drums, rack toms, and bass drums are all easily tuned without even hitting the drumhead. DrumDial measures tympanic pressure, not tension-rod torque. As a drummer you’ll appreciate how easily and accurately you can tune your drums with the Drumdial Drum Tuner.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #401 in Musical Instruments
- Brand: Drumdial
- Model: DD
- Dimensions: 3.00 pounds
Features
- No whacking necessary to tune your drums
- Accurate and quick, Low price
Customer Reviews:
Drum Dial is Awesome!
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.
Worth it’s weight in gold (and it’s a hefty little gadget!)
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.
Great product and great service
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.
kailyn9590302