Tension Monitoring Products

[Jaay]

I've been looking at a lot of products lately that are supposed to help you tune acoustic drumheads. They seem to come in either the form of the Tension Watch-type, where you lay it on the head, and the Memokey-type, where it torques the tension rod directly. Has anyone had any experience with these things? Are they accurate/reliable? Do they take some of the guess work out of tuning?

-Jaay

[Boingo]

Re: Tension Monitoring Products

Originally posted by Jaay
I've been looking at a lot of products lately that are supposed to help you tune acoustic drumheads. They seem to come in either the form of the Tension Watch-type, where you lay it on the head, and the Memokey-type, where it torques the tension rod directly. Has anyone had any experience with these things? Are they accurate/reliable? Do they take some of the guess work out of tuning?

-Jaay

I tried a few tensioning products a while back. I had a well built snare and the tension rods were very smooth. Measuring torque of the tension rod felt reliable. On the other hand, the toms were not so good. There was a lot of resistance. Threads could have been off, rods may have been bent, who knows? When that happens, it interferes with true torque readings and makes tuning with them useless. I went back to loosening the heads, tightening them finger tight using a typical torque rotation, pushing in on the head to seat it, going finger tight again and then counting turns of the drum key keeping things as even as possible. Tapping on the head close to the rim, but equal distant all the way around and tuning by the pitch is another technique.

I never used the tension watch type, but I would guess that it might be more reliable than most torque measurement products. I just don't get the impression most of these products have what it takes to consistantly and accurately measure this kind of stuff. Where I work, we calibrate these kinds of tools (torque devices and tension devices) frequently. You'd be surprised at how easily they drift, and I'm talking about expensive tools.

Of course, this is my opinion. I'm also somewhat of a tightwad and can't see spending on stuff like this. Others swear by them.

[fartnokker]

Defer to the experts...

Will the esteemed Mr. C. Jude step up to the plate on this one?

[fartnokker]

As always...

Thank you, doctor...

[OldGuy_E2P]

Drum Dial User

I've been using a Drum Dial for a couple of years now with my acoustic kit. It's very helpfull in getting real close to perfect very quickly, and seems to be pretty rugged.

Haven't even considered using it on the mesh heads since I pretty much just crank 'em up really tight - past the point of maximum rebound. Feels more like a mylar head to me that way.

I'm not certain that you could use the tensiometer (it's really a durometer - for the Mech Engineers out there) on the mesh heads due the 2 directions of the weave and the length of the threads being unequal. Could get some weird torque settings on the rods ...... might have to play with that some and see what happens.

Anyone tried it yet?

Later,
E2P