First of all the tension watch his hands down the best drum tuning device. Every drummer should have one. I owned one for over two years and decided it was useless. Yeah, the drums would have perfect tension all around but zero depth and sustain. I talked to a professional drum tech about my problem and he gave me a valuable pointer that changed my entire prospective on tuning, as well as my low opinion on my drum set and tension watch. He told me - by setting all the rods at the same tension you very often rob your drums of sustain and depth. Then he told me to start by tensioning all the rods around the drum a tad higher then specification. Once you finish that, follow by detuning one tension rod until the entire drum detunes to you're liking. You might think this would mess things up and that it would defeat the purpose of using the watch - but no. He explained, by doing this you add depth. I went home and tried it and it changed my life. All of a sudden my drums went from sounding pretty bad to fantastic. One of the beauties to this method is that you can tune your drums lower or higher with just one tension rod. That is, after you use your tension watch. Try it if you haven't already. Maybe it's not a secret - but it's a great pointer for drummers who haven't tried it.

It's great! I have it just few days now, but I wanted it all my drumming life! I found it great for checking head tension in early stage of tuning when the head isn't tight enough to hear its pitch, especially in bottom snare head tuning due to snare beds. Like my predecessors said, it doesn't stand alone without your ears, but when combined, there's not much you can't do! Use it alternate with your ears, checking each other out, and you can't do wrong. Just great!

I bought my tw100 back in 2000. It has definitely become an essential tool for me when putting new heads on and is nice to have to check your tuning from time to time. I have to say be sure to always use your ears when tuning, still tap around the head at lugs and such. Over the years I've moved from rock tunings to jazzier tunings and the tension watch has always been a great way to get each head tuned back to where I like it by remembering what numbers on the gauge I liked the best. This also helps a lot when trying to tune your resonant head tighter then your batter or vice versa. As others have said, when you first tune a head with this thing, you'll be amazed by how much difference there can be on the tension across your head even when you tension each lug exactly the same. Sometimes I think the tension watch MUST be wrong, but without fail, when I check the tuning with my ears after making sure it reads similar tension on each lug, it is right on. Even when it feels like I have sinched one lug down way too far to even it's tension out with the others. Just make sure you put it on a hard flat surface between each head you tune and zero out the dial as it can get very off zero while you are moving it around a head.

This didn't help me at all when it came to tuning my snare drum. I used the chart with recommended tensions and it had me just tightening the heads waaayyyyy too much. it was ridiculous. Then, after I killed over a half hour adjusting to the specifications it showed me, the drum sounded horrible, and it was too low despite the absurd over-tightening. I'm going to give it another shot and see how it goes on some of my other toms, etc., but I am not very optimistic about the results. For the price I expect something better than this.

I just got this at the local music store and went home and tuned all my drums. It was decently made, but it had some stuff that could be a lot better. You had to adjust the dial, and it could easily become moved and mess up tuning a lot. The instructions it comes with are written in english, but it still hardly makes sense. Also, when you tune both heads (batter and resonant), it totally messes up the tuning on the otherside, normally the case, but it totally messes what you write down(it comes with a chart) and if u retune it with that, it would sound bad. Last thing that is annoying it the measurement. It says ten mm, which is 1 cm. I dont know about everyone else, but I dont have a ruler with me 24/7. at least the drumdial one has a little thing that would make it easier. Question, does the kind of head matter? cause it kept giving me really low tensions for a standard set, and a lot higher and it still sounded too low. make your own judgement, but I would porbably buy the drumdial one.