A drum tuner, or drum tuning gadget, is a tool that aids a drummer or studio engineer when tuning drums. While many drummers opt to tune drums by ear, a tuner will give a visual representation of the tension on each lug and help an untrained ear tune a drum to sound more professional.
Drum tuners are typically used more frequently in recording studios during sessions. Some recording engineers even swear by them and ask the drummer to utilize these types of tools rather than just their own ears.
If you’ve read this far, chances are you are having trouble tuning your drums. I don’t believe that it’s necessary to own one of these products, but they can assist you if you are struggling.
That being said, if you own your own recording studio, I highly suggest investing in one as most drummers who come in to record probably won’t bring one with. Drum tuners are also extremely useful for touring drummers and drum technicians.
I have been in so many situations myself as a touring drummer where I’ve wanted to tune my drums, but wasn’t able to due to the ample amount of noise in the room prior to our soundcheck. Tuning drums is impossible with another band blaring through the PA speakers.
I wouldn’t only rely on a visual representation for tuning my drums, but at least I would have a good starting point when I wasn’t able to physically listen to the tuning.
Why Perfectly Tuned Drums May Sound Bad
While the drum tuning products listed above may help you, there may be other factors and variables that might be making your drums sound bad.
Bad sounding rooms have a huge impact on how great your drums will sound. For example, I may play a show one night in a club that sounds amazing, due to the acoustics of the room in relation to where I am on stage.
The toms sound huge and bright and the room itself has a natural reverberation that makes my drums sing. However, the night next on stage may sound terrible, regardless of how great my drums are tuned.
Old drum heads will sound bad, no matter how you tune them. If you’ve been playing drums for a few years and you haven’t changed your drum heads yet, do yourself a favor and go grab some new ones.
While I have heard of some people out there who swear by broken in drum heads, this is not something I can get behind. Old drum heads lose their tension and begin to sound dead after being playing for a long time.
Improper drum head seating may be a factor. When a drum head sits on the bearing edge, it needs to be seated correctly. If not, the tension rods will apply uneven pressure when tuned and the drum may have a “papery” and thin tone when played.
When seating your new drum head, be sure to apply a little pressure on it before beginning to tune the tension rods. This will ensure that the head is in place you will achieve an even tuning.
Stretch Your Drum Heads
Upon applying and seating your new drum heads, it’s important to get them a little stretched out.
After applying some medium tension on the lugs, place your palm in the center of the head and apply some force. You may hear some cracking, but that’s just the excessive glue loosening its grip. This is perfectly normal.
Tune the Batter Head Lower
While different styles call for different tunings, in my experience, tuning the top head lower and the resonant head up higher gives me a great result every time. The toms have more power and are fatter in tone and pitch.
Use a Drum Key Drill Bit
If you have a drill laying around at home, check out the drum key drill bit from Drum Workshop. I bring my cordless screw gun on tour and can’t think of what I’d do without this for changing heads in a pinch. For faster changing of heads, there’s nothing better (but you will want to be careful while using a screw gun).
Experiment with Dampening
Can’t get that ring to stop? Try experimenting with different dampening: gaffers tape, Moongel, Drum Dots, dampening rings, Duct Tape (actually, don’t), towels, whatever you can think of!
Always Tune the Tension Rod Opposite
If you want to get a quicker and better result when tuning, always tune the tension rod opposite the one you’re currently on next. As you tune one tension rod, you’ll find that others around it will tend to loosen.
Tuning with this opposite technique tends to reduce this and gets your drum in tune faster.
Use Your Ear
We have to remember that every product on this list is just a tool. Even after using the Drum Dial or the Tune Bot Studio, you’ll need to go back in and make fine-tuned adjustments for each drum.
9 comments
Eric
I try to tune my reso head of my Sonor SQ2 snare nearby the recommended 400hz, but unfortunately the readings of my Tune-Bot is is nog gone be higher than 220hz. When I tension up de head cracks and I’m afraid I broke the head when I push the lug more tightly.
So my question: is there something with my tune-bot or do I be nog that scared and tight up further?
Is het possible to broke the edge of a head if the tension is to much?
Liz
Hello Nick, I found this article very interesting. But I have a question. I have timpani that do not have pedals, and it is a struggle to tune them. Do you know if tune-bot would work on timpani?
Nick Cesarz
I did a little looking around, and DrumDial has timpani tuning charts, so that might be an option: https://www.drumdial.com/how-to-use/timpani-tuning-charts/
Liz
Thanks for your reply Nick. I did look at DrumDial, but I could not find out how to convert the pressure reading to frequency. I assume that this conversion depends on the size of the drum. For pedal timps all we need to do is to tune to the fundamental frequency. But I need to be able to tune to a specific pitch.
Nick Cesarz
Hi Liz,
I don’t have any experience tuning timpani, even the kind with pedals. I’ve only played timpani while using pedals to adjust pitch, never actually tuned them myself (at university, our professor was skilled in this regard). I think Tune Bot would work if it would attach to the rim properly.
Vinnie Kay
Nice article. Like you, I bought the drum dial years ago and recently bought the
tune-bot studio. It takes awhile and some practice to get the tune-bot working. I really like the fact that the instruction manual gives tuning frequency numbers for the different size drums. This way I have a clue as to what my drum should sound like.
Also, I have a vintage Gretsch kit with two 12” rack toms. With the frequency guide, I can tune one of the toms down to the “correct” frequency rather than just a lower tone than the other Tom.
I have another tool to quickly get all tension rods equally tightened. It is the RhythmTech Pro TORQ Drum Key. This thing is AWESOME! It immediately gets all rods evenly tensioned. It’s a bit tricky finding the right adjustment, but once you dial it in, (and it doesn’t take long. Only a minute or two) It’s fantastic! Using this tool and then checking it with the tune-bot is the way to go for me. Even without the tune bot you can quickly change a head and be reasonably assured that the tension is even. You just won’t know the precise frequency. The Protorq is a combination torque wrench and drum key that allows players to pre-select a tension level for tuning any drum, giving them a super fast way to tune. Boom!
Aaron Shea
Might be late reading this but what, I love sharing my opinion with the drumming community as it always helps to have numerous OPINIONS (not hard as stone “Facts” like some people share, usually avid Drum and Musical theorists).
I’m a +1 with Vinnie Kay, exactly…. weird haha. I owned a DDIAL for a while before recently getting the TBOT, and I can honestly swear by both. I was aware of the tune bot, but it was pricey and hard to justify buying on a budget when I already had a dial. But after a while, I really wanted to start turning to notes and frequencies, so I did some looking and found the DRUMTune Pro app on Google play. It’s funny that it wasn’t mentioned in the article considering it’s what is pictured up top, so allow me to share.
It is essentially a TBOT Studio, using your devices mic to tune to frequencies and notes, though anyone who has used both of these tuners knows that it really doesn’t compare to the TBOT studio as far as filtering and accuracy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great app for the price, and it does function, but its really not even close in comparison. DRUMTune Pro also comes with a bunch of handy features (save kits, interval tuning) and guides (frequency ranges, intervals, etc) which are a little bit more helpful than what comes in the tunebot manual. You can try it free for a week and subscribe for $1.99/month after that (it won’t automatically do that, which is always a plus) or buy it outright for like $20-30.
*tip* Put a moongel or tone ring on the drum while tuning, It really helps reading through the overtones
My personal opinion is save to get a TBOT studio. Make sure it’s the STUDIO, not the cheaper GIG model. I had a chance to try the gig and the filters suck, and you cant save kits for recall. Use the app I mentioned until you can afford it.
Bram
Hi Aaron, thanks for the mentioning. We appreciate it. BTW, please update Drumtune PRO to the latest version. (The lug pitch detection evolved a lot. If any questions about the app, you are always welcome to reach out to support. We’re happy to help! Thanks.)
Nick Cesarz
Aaron, thanks for the reply! So much insightful information there! Regarding the inclusion of the app shown in the featured image, I completely forgot to add in some words about it! I took the photo, updated the image, and never came back to the article. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Have you tried any other tuning apps? I’ve only tried DRUMTune Pro, but I see there is also iDrumTuner. I’m going to pit them against each other to see which is better. I only have an iOS device, so I don’t have access to the Google Play store.