Drum Key vs. $1368 in Tuning Gadgets

hey everyone it's jared and today is gonna be a really really fun video i'm gonna be testing out all these different drum tuning devices drum tuning can be so frustrating especially when you're first starting out playing drums so what do you do you run to your store and say how can you help me what sort of devices do you have to make my drums sound like the albums i love or the videos that i watch online and there's a lot of products out there that claim to get you the perfect drum sound or claim to make tuning super easy and you don't even have to there's like takes out all the guesswork or stuff like that and i don't know for me i've always been a bit of a skeptic and i'm much more along the lines of practice tuning really start to develop your ear understand that it takes time it takes effort it takes energy and really just take off the snare drum head put it back on tune it up take off the snare drum hand put it back on tune it up do that over and over again and if you do it enough times you're going to figure out what works best for you now all that being said if there's a tool that can help shortcut things or make things easier i think we should consider it and we should talk about it and that's what this video is all about so we're going to start today with the classic drum key but while i'm doing that please consider liking and subscribing to these videos as my nine-year-old kid says you gotta smash that subscribe button hit the notifications bell because it really helps me out uh that's what the kids are doing these days yes as we're awesome for me before we started this i've been uh you've been playing drums for a long time right so drum training is like easy for you i'm like yes ross i'm really old okay this is like my 17th year creating content online yes i am getting old but um what i'm going to do here to start this is i'm just going to quickly finger tighten all of the tension runs my tyson are you you going tyson over there in the corner is uh is timing me and so this is what i like to do when getting any drum ready to be tuned or tensioned or whatever you want to call it and we might speed up a lot of these this process just to kind of not waste too much of your time but i get everything finger tight that's basically as tight as i can go just with my fingers and you know it's not it's not going to be a perfect tension it's not you're not always going to start from a totally equal playing field but for me it's just what has worked over the years you know i like i like a bunch of different snare sounds so it depends on how i'm using it and what i'm using it for that's that will determine the sound if i want more of a fat splat or i wanna get tuned up really really high to get that funky pop or you know that r b sound or whatever you want um it's always going to be changing based on the style of use music you're playing in this case and all these drums i'm going to be tuning them up a little bit higher just to kind of get that nice tight crack sound maybe a little bit of ring we won't be doing any muffling or anything like that so you might hear a little bit of ring but there we go basically i got everything finger tight oh these ones are a little bit loose okay so now i'm going to take my drum key i'm going to start over here and i'm just going to one turn one turn and i'm i'm not being uber scientific about it okay this is just me cranking it up this is exactly what i do when i am tensioning a new snare drum head i'm not even see this one came completely loose i'm not i'm not that scientific about it and i think a lot of times people just overthink it you know especially new drummers you get this drum you think there's this this big scientific oh no this big scientific process to tuning but really you know you don't want to wreck the drum head you don't want to you know twist anything or over tighten anything so you want to have you want to know what the main principles are i kind of lost where i was okay so now i'm kind of doing it by feel at this point you can hear it's getting getting tighter and i'm just gonna crank it up i will do the i will tap the tension rods and kind of listen to the tone of the drum and see where we're at but at this point as ross so eloquently put it i'm old and i've been doing this for a long time and for me i can like i can just kind of feel the head and okay that's pretty good so what i'll do now is i'll i'll turn off the the the wires and i'll just listen it's a little bit high [Music] this is what could take time [Music] sounds really good by the way this is an amazing drum this is uh what is this steve gasps yeah it is i thought it was i was either the wet color guy but i can feel because of the the square lugs okay so that's actually pretty good now just by feeling this the first time i hit it i want it to sound really good so everything is is relatively close and i know there's a lot of purists out there now that are like oh my goodness you you didn't do the perfect star pattern every time or or uh you didn't you know check all the the tone of each tension rod and you the the people are going to re-watch the video and tell me everywhere where i made a mistake but let's just listen to the drum okay just listen right [Music] sounds pretty good with a little bit muffling just a tiny thumb i love it it's as simple as that now everyone has a different snare drum everyone has a different room we are miking this with this beautiful earthworks microphone which is going to the soundboard and kristy is making it sound good she's processing it and you're not hearing an exact representation of what's in this room i just want to be very clear about that i don't want to to misrepresent it but i think using a traditional drum key just a very simple process kind of a basic star pattern not getting too romantic with it understanding that this drums whether they're wood whether they're metal it's made of organic material you're going to have some inconsistencies between drums you're going to have some inconsistencies between the room and it is what it is and so for me i put a little bit of muffling on this before i played it but not a lot and i think it sounds pretty awesome so that is the drum key how long did it take that was three minutes and 45 seconds three minutes and 45 seconds to i think almost a perfect sounding drum so let's go on to the next one we're going to go this way all right next up we are going to be using a drum dial i believe these are made somewhere in arizona i know victor gudera one of our audio guys here for many many years has um done some work with drumdial and he swears by okay and he's not a drummer but he is like a professional drum tech as he's tacked so many drum sets that come into drumeo tyson is here as well tyson you use this drum dial i use that drumdial if i'm trying to keep multiple drums sounding exactly the same so he uses it if he's trying to keep multiple drums sounding exactly the same that's he says for me i've used it and from what i understand it measures the the tension of the drum head with this kind of spike on the bottom so this gets pushed down and then it measures the the actual how how tight the tympanic pressure i believe that's the term of the drum head is so you can make sure it's consistent so if you want to be it to be at 20 on every tension rod then you set it that way so it's 20 on every tenshon or if you want to be 30 or 40 or whatever if you want it like it looser like a tighter but you can make sure that each tension rod is exactly the same and it comes in this nifty little case which i think is this is a og case because they mostly come in cardboard boxes now okay so let's uh first start by hand tightening or finger tightening all of the tension rods [Music] tension runs our finger tighten now if i if i look at what it currently is i don't even know if it's measuring anything it just keeps spinning what does that say it's 55 65 okay so what i'm going to do i'm just going to bring up the tension similarly to what i did in the previous drum do a star pattern around and you'll probably see that slowly creeping up because i think i want to start from where like from a place from attention where it's more in line with what i'm going to actually be playing it at as opposed to trying to keep it the same going all the way up to tension if you know what i mean if that made any sense whatsoever this drum you can definitely feel the the quality of lug inserts like they need some they need some oil what is this pdp okay so it's a lower end drum again i'm just doing it by feel so we'll kind of get a an example of how far off i am on on me doing it by feel okay cranking it nice and tight and then we're gonna go around each tension rod and check the tension okay so where are we at here we are at man i need glasses okay so this is 87 moving it over here they say they tell me you got to lift it between each one so putting it down here oh so it's much i know it's similar or maybe let's go across okay that's around 88 so we can bring it down to 87. we'll use 87 as our control okay left let's put it over here this one is i have to look at it this way i'm sorry 87 that's good 87 87 this is 85. actually not that far off from just hand tightening that's 85. oh it feels so much tighter so i haven't even listened to it yet like i could i might have been happy with the sound trying to get it to 87 all the way around it seems to be shifting from when i do one side to the next okay there now they're telling me they're all fresh heads as well so we are going to get a little bit of changes but i think that's a at least it's a control they're all the same right they're all fresh so okay so that 87 which might be might be where i like it might be not where i like it but i know that each tension rod is pretty even so let's hear how it sounds [Music] sounds pretty good now this is a that's a steel drum right this is a wood drum uh i believe it's a maple shell i would actually crank it up a little bit more so i want to see if i crank it like a half turn on each tension rod if it's actually the same then i'm going to recheck it with the drum dial and so what you can do with this drum dial is once you figure out where you like it you can write down your settings and always revert back to that okay so we're at like 88 so that only brought it up a little bit 88 let's just spot check a few 88 88 or 89 maybe all very close again [Music] sounds pretty good to me i mean you could crank it up you could crank it down and if you wanted to make sure it was even i could bring it down to 80. and then i could write down okay 80 i'm getting that kind of more flappy sounding snare that low tone and if i have it at 90 that's going to give me more of a pop sounding snare and so you could track that so every time you get a new drum head that you just pull out your drum dial and it sounds the same it's super consistent and i think a product like this for those purposes is awesome when you want every drum to sound consistent from changing of heads or from one room to the next or anything like that get yourself a drum dial it's kind of beefy i don't know if this is something you just want to have in your your drum bag or anything like that but especially if it was in this case it's not necessarily something that's super portable but from what i hear they come in like just a cardboard box and maybe like a canvas bag or something like that and you can you could throw it in your drum bag or your backpack and make sure the drums are always sounding great i guess especially if you're playing a backline kit and you know you're like your toms at a certain tension this is going to measure the tension okay this is not measuring the tone of the drum at all it's basically measuring that the tympanic pressure and or the tension of this drum head so it's like if you push down on it and we're able to figure out a number assign a number to that that's what this is doing so i like the dr i like the drum dial i like that it's it still requires you to listen you know but it's it's helping you apply the the same amount of tension but it really requires you still to use your ears a lot and that's what i like about the drum dial so i don't know what i'd give this out of 10 but we have them here and we we use them regularly okay so next let's move on to some torque keys all right so next up we have an evans torque key and as you can see here this is a 40 dollar drum key okay so this drum key better be because at 40 bucks i can't say that i can't say that now that is in canadian dollars so for all you americans or anyone around the world uh you know it might be different in your currency but still 40 bucks and uh it really better do quite an amazing job for that so what i think this is is it measure it's measuring the torque on the tension rods so every time you turn you're turning at the same it takes the same amount of pressure and then as soon as the you go over that amount of pressure this just kind of pops out and then you know okay that's that's the tension you want it at so what you do is you basically tighten this bottom thing up and so now if i actually want to actually really have to push on it and so you can imagine if you're actually turning the tension rod as soon as it gets to a certain type of difficulty that's going to click and then you know okay time to move on so i'm going to start by finger tightening once again and the reason i'm doing this finger tightening every time is because i i don't know if some of these do do the tightening on their own i know we had one device that didn't arrive on time and it would actually take care of this process for you but it doesn't take too long a few seconds and what am i what drum is this okay it's a pearl sensitone maples or another wood drum okay so i basically just tighten this up a little bit but i'm going to loosen it off because what i don't want to do is i don't want to crank this up to tension all the way and then crank the other one up because it's going to kind of bend the rim so i do want to bring it up in a relatively even manner so i'm just going to go around the star pattern like i was doing with previous with previous devices make sure i get a kind of an even feel when it comes to the tension of each tension rod make sure the head's not rippled or anything like that they are brand new drum heads so we are going to get some seating happening and they're going to slip possibly but evans are from all my experience evans just tune up really really quickly i don't i don't really jam my hand into them or fist like you see a lot of people do i kind of got it to a random place i didn't even really do an exact start pattern because i wanted it to be random now i'm going to crank this up let's see see what happens all right put it back okay this might work it's pretty simple i'll say that ross ross just hates he says if i ever spend forty dollars on a drum key he says shoot him in the head because he means he doesn't respect money anymore right that's true oh my okay so maybe this one because this one went right away maybe that one's over tensioned let's bring it down a bit bring it back up okay pretty close and i'm kind of going slow i'm not jarring it because i don't want it to to pop too easily i want it to actually be the tension of the lug so if i go across again wow okay let's hit it see yo pretty it's pretty good how long was that that was three minutes three minutes and i i gotta tell you this whole thing it's simple you want it to be a little bit tighter crank it tighter again go around the whole drum now i know that each tension rod is the same i guess this wouldn't work if um this wouldn't work if there you had a lug insert that was maybe catching or the the actual tension rod was what do they call it when it goes on an angle cross threading so if your tension rod was cross threaded you know what it would probably measure the the torque incorrectly but you see i've cranked it up a lot tighter [Music] boom [Music] it's 40 bucks but it seems really well built and the concept is just really really really simple and so if you have a new drum with the lug inserts they're well oiled and you know that this is going to accurately represent the torque that it takes to turn each tension rod i highly recommend you get one of these i actually don't have one at home and i kind of want to get one all right so next up is the regal tip drum torque and it's the best way to tune and tension drums i thought it was one kind of one in the same can you tune without tensioning i guess tuning is more listening to the notes and tensioning is more feeling the actual how tight it it is so there's a similar style to the evans torquey but quite a lot quite a bit bigger and you can see on the top it's going to be measuring like if i hold this it's going to be measuring how much tension it is when i turn uh the torque the drum torque and so if it's at 15 or 20 let's uh let's just start by finger tightening and this one i'm actually gonna i'm gonna bring up the tension with this drum torque thing which i did with the other one but i'm gonna see if we can just crank it up and if that actually works okay so i've got it mostly finger tightened but i actually didn't spend a lot of time making sure it was that even i wanted to actually try it with the the drum torque to see if it works so cranking on it i don't know if you can see in the overhead when will it start okay there we go so i'm gonna put it on each one to five to start just to kind of get on an even playing field so far so so good i mean if this is just getting people to a starting point to where everything's the tension is even and then you could use your ears the rest of the way i think it's a really helpful device especially for new drummers wondering how tight they should actually make their their snare drum head i know when i first started out i i just took off heads and tried to get it to sound good and then i did that again the next day and i was just kind of obsessed with tweaking and um and changing things okay so let's go up to 15 and i'm just gonna go around the drum that's kind of annoying why would they have that outside of the why would they have it so you could take it out do you know why is this not just in there other adapters like if you have t-rods or if you have slot rods oh it's kind of annoying though because if you lose that if you lose that piece then you're screwed yeah i would glue it in place yeah because i move this to 15 and i have no idea if 15 is is a reasonable tension or if it's gonna be super loose it's quite because this thing is actually quite easy to turn you know i'm just turning with my fingers so we'll do this and then we'll hit it at 15 and see how it sounds okay let's hit it let's check the tension this is a casey or no this is a tama that seems higher do you hear that 15 maybe it went too high how do i bring it down [Music] bringing it down a bit still seems higher it sounds pretty good let's go let's go up a little bit more i feel like it's not as much tension on it as uh previous drums so i'm gonna do exactly 20. oops that one i went up a little bit high oh my goodness yeah right you can dock points i will i will rate these all at the end just so you know i just i wanted to try them first before i rated them all to actually kind of get more of a an idea of how easy or or hard each one of them is to use because i can kind of have a better um i don't know just a better idea of what's currently in the market overall rather than just rating them one at a time okay i believe i've got to 20 all the way around so i went up from 15 to 20 went up five more now let's listen to it [Music] sounds pretty good to me so how long did that take five minutes five minutes and 56 seconds now i did do two rounds of tensioning so if you had this and you knew you always liked it at 20 you probably would have gotten away with four minutes or whatever but uh it's a really easy to use device i actually really like it compared to the evans torque key i think they're similar right and so i would probably opt to use the evans torque key but this maybe will give you a more accurate representation of the torque i'm not exactly sure because we're not measuring their their ability to actually measure and give the perfect amount of torque the evidence you can't actually say oh i like it at i believe i don't believe you can you can oh here you go so on the bottom of the evidence just so everyone knows you can actually measure where you were and so if you always like it at the the top tension i think i cranked it tight so that's at around nine um then you could just make sure it's like that every single time all right so you know two interesting devices they both work and they both help you get a good consistent tension next we're gonna move on to the toon bot all right next up we have the toon bot by overtone labs and the toonbot has a bit of an interesting history when they came out with this technology they put a patent on the process that they use to actually process the audio from the drum i believe okay i'm not not that familiar with everything but that patent that they have prevents people from developing apps with your phone using similar technologies where it processes the sound because you're you have a super computer in your pocket or at least most people do and you don't necessarily need this external device you probably are already carrying what could be a tune bot so the apps came out and overtone labs basically sent cease and desist to these apps to basically get them to stop infringing on their patent now i'm not trying to get into who's right who's wrong or anything but the toon bot is in canadian dollars 125. bucks okay now we are going to be testing an app which is maybe a licensed product um maybe they license the patent or maybe it uses a slightly different process but um i just know that that's one thing about toonbot i've never tried it before um but it's a pretty slick and well-made looking device i really like this matte black it almost has like more of a rubber feel on it so let me just bring it up sorry let me just turn it on and so from my understanding from what i've seen online you simply clamp this to the side of the drum can you see that ross yeah okay and but what i'm going to first do is just bring it up to bring the drum up to a reasonable tension and i believe this this actually listens to the frequencies okay so this is not measuring tension where what that's what the drum dial is doing so here it's actually listening to the drum and it's gonna give us a number i guess it's a what does it measure the hertz the hertz and it it'll tell us if if where each tension rod is at so you can make sure it's they're all even so what i'd like to do as well is once we measure with the toon bot each tension rod to make sure they're all the same i like to check it with the the drum dial and maybe check it with the tour key to see how close it actually is and if it's doing what it says it should do because it's one thing to listen to the tone of the drum because it's almost doing the job that your ears should be doing whereas i think the torque keys and the drumdial it's just measuring tension and i think it's it's obviously a scientific process and this is a scientific process as well but i think some people might have the mindset that oh this is actually listening to the drum and it's going to tell me what sounds good it will not tell you what sounds good it'll just give you a number to tell you what sort of tone is coming off of each tension rod okay so let's hit this tension rod so 289 289 let's hit this one [Music] 286 289 287 tiny bit 290. 290. so i started with 289 because that was my first one 293 let's go down tiny bit [Music] 292. 291 [Music] 287 291 down [Music] 289 basics i don't know how how exact it has to be 288 come on 286. come on seriously [Music] 287 [Music] winning the lottery 285 let's go up [Music] it's pretty self-explanatory i'll tell i'll give you that it's like super easy to use right you just clamp it on you're still having to do the work with the drum key [Music] and i didn't read the instructions on this i maybe should have i know some people might give me great for that what's going on why is it going down when i'm cranking it up 27 [Music] okay 287 let's uh i'll leave it on because it's not really doing anything sounds pretty good you know and if i just listen it's really nice that they're all they're all similar and it is measuring that tone for you it's measuring that tone for you so if you want to do that fine tweaking maybe if you feel like the torque keys aren't going to give you that that that perfect level of tension maybe your your lug inserts are not properly oiled maybe you're using an old drum and you don't really trust the torque key you want to you want something that actually measures the sound and the tone of the drum i think that's a that's a this is a really cool representation of that so let's go up a little bit more let's um let's bring it let's just crank it up 329 327 it's all really really close okay let's hear it again it sounds really good so that definitely does the job 125 bucks i don't know if you want to pay that i do wish that uh overtone labs would continue to sell this because i think a lot of people want a product like this that they can have on hand in the drum room not always use their phone i think it's a really really neat idea and it gives drummers a guide um and and it really focuses on the way the drum sounds as opposed to something just as simple as like a torque key or anything like that and i'm sure there's many many other features in here where it comes yeah you can save things and you can looks like you can store different drum sets and everything like that but i think this would be much much better delivered in an app form because like i said you have a super computer in your pocket much easier to store kits much easier to save kits you could other people could submit their um their numbers so if you have if your favorite drummer use the app and maybe they have this hey maybe they have this where you could you could download your favorite drummer's numbers and then you could tune your kit the same way with the same heads and try and get a similar sound i know that's something that i would love to do so i i like this idea of a product but i think they should also have an app so if you don't have an app and you want to create one with this you should we should talk because i think we could do something really really cool all right next up is one of my favorite tuning devices and that is a drill why because i'm so impatient okay i like to get this type of stuff done quickly because drumming for me is about drumming it's not really a bunch it's much about this i know a lot of people love the it's therapeutic to take care of the drum gear and to tune things inside i get it sometimes i like to do that but in general when i get the chance to go to my drum room i just want to hit him as hard as possible and blow off steam so evans has a bit so a key that you basically put into a drill i'm not sure the price on this but i believe it's like was it 10. 10 or 15 bucks 20 bucks depending on where you are this fits in in any drill so if you have a drill we're not counting the price of this but i'm actually going to take this and use it to actually tension the lugs i'm not actually going to have to do finger tightening so what i do is i'll basically bring them until they tap the rim but i'm not gonna drill them right in so if you're using this sort of thing be very careful okay basically bring it to where it's touching the rim and i know some people are gonna like some people are not gonna like how i do this but i'm gonna do it anyways because it's my drum and i can do what i want okay so then i'm going to crank it up and i'm going to go around again get it tight [Music] i know there's lots of people that are just like oh my goodness jared what are you doing that's a dw exactly okay [Music] not that bad let's go a little bit tighter now i'm not i just want to be very clear i'm not suggesting you do that okay i've been doing this type of stuff for a long time uh it's my drum if it broke i'd be fine with it because i have tyson over there and tyson is awesome at fixing stuff so i'm kind of in a blessed uh position and if i if i wreck something i'll be fine but i don't recommend usa do that that said let's let's hear it [Music] okay but the ultimate test is let's do the the drum dial so we can measure the tension okay so let's measure the tension that i actually got on here with the drill and the guys were just mentioning to me that drills actually do have torque settings on them the torque setting on the drill is essentially going to limit the amount of pressure it puts on whatever it's trying to to turn and so it's similar it's similar to a torque key but in electronic format and not necessarily made for tensioning instruments okay it's meant for like doing screws or like more construction type stuff so i wouldn't necessarily say that's something you can rely on but you need to first test to make sure that it's not gonna you're not gonna completely wreck your lug or your your rim okay so let's uh let's measure this so what are we at we are at 93 okay 93. do that let's go to the other side 93 92 93 that's not bad guys 93. oh my goodness 92 i'd say that's pretty good hey so whether whether you like what i did or not i got it i got it in tension and what was the time a minute 44 a minute 44. so i'm telling you if you put one of these drills in your drum room and you you get sick and tired of like tensing things with your fingers and taking care of that especially i have five toms i have five toms a bass drum two snare drums three rototoms uh uh an auxiliary snare drum a little little a f so if i'm changing all of my drum heads this is honestly where i'm going to now that said i've been playing and doing this for a long time so um you know i'm old and because with age comes some wisdom because with wisdom you gain from experience right and so i've had a lot of experience tensioning and tuning drums and over the years you're going to get more and more comfortable with it just figuring out by feel exactly what you like and so i love the drill but i also don't mind checking it with these tools as well okay now we're going to test out an app now this is the i drum tune pro and i know i mentioned that there's different technologies that have patents on it in relation to drum tuning or drum tensioning and i believe either they've found some way to get around it or they're just saying forget about it we're just gonna do it and we're gonna we're gonna get the lawsuit when we get it and cross that bridge when we get there i don't know um but what i'm gonna start with is just by getting this tensioned up i've already got it finger tightened so i'm just gonna move around the drum and bring it up to a reasonable tension and then i'm going to even it out [Music] okay so i'm going to bring it up a little bit more because the tension is not quite where i want it i'm going to use the the eye drum tune to actually just do the fine tuning because i don't think these these types of products are actually meant to [Music] uh to help you bring it up from when it's flappy right so tyson you're getting lots of notifications uh let's go to pitch tuning okay so let's turn off the drum i believe i just hold this beside it [Music] 210 and it's measuring through hertz let's try this 303 [Music] 359. [Music] 361. [Music] 212 207 [Music] 208 so it looks like it's measuring it better when i just hold it in one spot 206. so it's gotten it pretty close i just hold it like this but it took me a minute if i was putting it too close it wasn't measuring properly so again if i'm just holding here near the drum [Music] what is that and then across what is that 352 again three oh one [Music] 206 so you really i think have to focus on hitting because it's measuring frequencies it changes if i hit too close to the edge so you got to make sure you hit it in a consistent spot from each tension rod i think that's where i'm messing it up and i'm not as familiar with these products as maybe i should be [Music] but you're getting my first impression so so we're we're at around 206 207 i haven't actually had to do any sort of adjustments because when i finger tightened it and i slowly cranked it up to tension just using a basic drum key it gets me almost there perfectly [Music] 205 207 so i mean there's not much to that i think it's going to help you if you're way off but the difference between 205 and 207 you might not even be able to hear it with your ears [Music] [Applause] and so similarly to the tune bot it measures the hertz there's a bunch of other functionality in there which i'm not going to get into but it allows you to make sure each tension rod is giving you a nice even sound okay we're not talking about the actual tension of the actual tension rod more about the sound coming off the drum head it's measuring the hertz allowing you to make them all the same and so for that i'm saying it it seems like it does a really really good job i can test it now with the drum dial okay so we are 90 [Music] 90. yeah so it's it's this is nice so just the three spot checks there this is really close now one thing about this is the idrum tune pro it is nine dollars for this app in the canadian app store i don't know what it is in the american app store but comparative to the the toon bot which is 125 you know you might decide to just go with something like this because it's literally 10 times cheaper and does a very similar thing this allows you to it has tutorials in it and it has presets as well okay now i haven't gone through this app i don't know about the too much about the stability of the app this is something that tyson gave me he downloaded um it's well reviewed is it not it's it's well reviewed but other than that i do not have a ton of experience you are seeing my first impressions in this video all right so now let's move on to the next drum all right the final drum we're gonna test and the final device is a dial tune snare drum now this company was created to use their technology which is a cable tuning system that allows you to tune the top and the bottom head independently with one dial hence the name dial tune so as i'm cranking on this the top head is actually you know tuning up or tensioning up and as i turn it down it's going down now what they've also done is they've created their patented system for changing drum heads so once you crank it all the way down you just pop this off [Music] and boom there you go uh really really brilliant uh brilliant technology brilliant engineering super smart the guys that are doing this the brian's i call them they're just really nice people as well and uh you know i really wish them all the best on this this is something that i think is going to make so many drummers lives so much easier because what do you do when you put the drum head on are are you uh timing me yeah they're timing me so you put the drum head on you crank the dial here and crank the bottom head because i believe i'm doing bottom and top because i like a tabletop tight bottom [Music] and without a tent tighten the wires a little bit [Music] the wires a little more [Music] and actually like a little bit tighter [Music] so [Music] you can go tighter so it's as simple as that to tension the drum but i also want to measure the tension with our trusty drumdial and see where we're at so we're at around 90. a little bit lower we're at 87 88 and now this is a new drum head 89 89 so that might change over time as it kind of gets seated 89. so it's pretty close not perfect but pretty close let's crank it up more [Music] and what's nice is you can crank the top and the bottom head you could actually tune while you're playing [Music] [Music] i got tired of my arm so dial 10 it's a great product it's a little bit bulkier it doesn't sit on the snare stand in the same way we kind of have to uh with with the cradle actually move it into the ridge of the rim because the same rim is on the bottom so you can easily change your bottom head if you ever puncture that or you're just looking for something a little bit different but it doesn't always sit or seat the exact same way that said once you get used to it it's pretty simple the drum is a little bit heavier but it still sounds great you can tune it up you can get a nice pop you know funky sound you can tune it way down you can get a nice fat slappy sound and so overall i'm really really happy with this it takes hardly any time at all i don't know if you were did you four seconds 54 seconds and so once you once you got quicker at it you could you could probably actually do it quicker um but it's overall just a really really cool product so i'd encourage you to check it out all right so i've had a chance to try all these different devices and i know we didn't get to all of them there's more on the market but these i think were all the most popular ones and they kind of gave us a range of measuring through the tension as opposed to measuring the actual sound of the drum to just the traditional drum key or the more uh kind of rugged uh i would say drill which is one that i really really liked but let's let's actually just give the rating so i started with i started with the drum key and i'll say there's benefits to a drum key but there's also downsides it takes a little bit longer with a drum key so i'm going to rate that an 8 out of 10. then i moved on to the the drum dial and you know when it comes to this as opposed to a drum key you're still going to need a drum key when you use this right so i would also just rate this 8 out of 10 when it comes to other things like the toon bot the toon bot on when it comes to price and having to now manage this other device having to get batteries for it having to learn how to use it how to store your presets and all that i feel like that it could have done a way better job on integrating that technology utilization of that patent within an app as opposed to a device which i'm sure they make more money on than an app but i think an app is the future and so i'm going to go ahead and rate that as six when i look at the the torque key okay this is pretty much like a drum key a really expensive drum key that has an added feature of allowing you to make sure the torque on each tension rod is totally even i'm gonna write this a nine i actually really like this i'm giving it gonna dock at one point because i think the price is a little bit much but i was i would hope that they could bring down the price 10 and 15 bucks now we have the would you say it was the needy neary the neri drum torque distributed by regal tip i like the idea similarly to the torque key though i just think this is a lot of money and a lot bigger and kind of unnecessary and clunky so i'm going to go ahead and give that a six the dial tune snare i'll say it's real it's heavy it doesn't necessarily fit in the snare basket the same way but it gets added points because changing the drum head is super easy although i don't know how even each lug was because we tested it with the the drum dial and there were slight inconsistencies you think that it would just be 100 perfect but it's not that said i'm still going to give it a 9 because it's uh i like seeing innovation in acoustic drums so many so much of the innovation happens in electronic drums and for a company to say you know what you know we're going to help out the drummers who are still playing acoustic drones i really really like that and i could see them kind of making the technology more elegant making it kind of disappear more into the drum over the years as they continue to do more r d and continue to innovate i think they just need the support of the community and that you know that's up to us do we support this type of innovation then we have the old trustee drill and you're going to hate me but i'm going to go ahead and give this one a 10 because speed okay this gives me speed and once you get used to it you can get quality with it but be very very careful don't wreck your drum and lastly vk sent us this uh this kind of cut out where it's it's like it's like a drum key so it allows you to um crank and change the tension although that one's cranked up really tight i'm not changing that without cutting my hand but they allows you to also open a beer so with all that said number one thing i want to tell you is use your ears above all else use your ears and learn how to trust them because the more that you can trust your ears the more that you can use all of these devices to your benefit and never use them as a crutch okay it's really really important if you're just starting out and you're like oh man i love the tune bot i love that it just it's clamps on it's super simple and it gets me to where i want to go quicker i i think that's amazing okay all of these people all these companies i think they're they really want to help drummers get the get better sounds of their drums they really want to help you enjoy playing your drums more and so that's what it's all about it's about playing drums having fun doing it so i hope you enjoyed this video make sure you leave a comment right below and tell me what device do you use do you use your ears do you use the tune bot do you use a drill do you think i'm ridiculous for actually drilling my drums like that leave me a comment say hi i'd love to hear from you and i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Drumeo

Views: 118,077

Keywords: drum tuning, how to tune drums, drum key, how to tune a drum, jared falk, drum accessories, torque key, how to tune a snare drum, drum tuning app, drum tuning tips, drum tuning snare, drumeo lesson, jared falk drum lessons, jared falk drumeo, drum tuning tutorial, snare tuning, Drum video, Drum tuning gadget, Drum gadget, Drum Key vs. $1368 in Tuning Gadgets, drum tuning sound, drum lessons, drum tuning with drum dial, Drumeo, Team drumeo, free drum lesson, tuning tips

Id: 5tISyonzcxA

Length: 53min 21sec (3201 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020