I’m finally giving up on my internal ticker to keep an even beat for me, so I’m looking to get a metronome for practice.
I checked out some on musiciansfriend.com and holy-moly-me the options and corresponding price variations these days! The last one I ever used was fancy and high-tech–it had a knob to control the speed and it would click AND flash a light, too!
Any personal recommendations of particular models or especially useful features I should be on the lookout for? I don’t want to break the bank, but I’d be willing to pay a little more for something with a few extra bells and whistles (no pun intended), if they’re going to be worthwhile to have.
It seems a lot of them have a max tempo of 208bpm, which seems like it could be on the slow side for some ITM. Is it important to get something with a higher top end, or is it easy enough to half-it and double up?
I use a very basic electronic metronome that is about the size of a stack of credit cards. I can’t think of any bells and whistles I would need otherwise. I spent about $15-$20 bucks on it and have been quite satisfied.
Also, I think it is easier to double it up on a slower tempo than to crank it up to 300 BPM.
Hope this helps
Get one that is LOUD. I have one of the credit card sized ones and unless its sitting on my shoulder I can’t hear it when im playing the higher notes. Just my two cents…
kel
I like the korg ma30- Its got an earphone jack, so it can be amplified. The thing is cheap, small, and simple. and to me durable. I like it.. Yes it just beeps- its a metranome! Not a drum machine!
Ditto on the KORG MA-30 - has a bunch of useful features, works well and has lasted. I wish I could remember where I got mine; it was recommended by Bill Ochs - someplace online that was in the South - for about $18. I just tried a search for it and couldn’t find it. The lowest price I found was J&R (JR.com) for $24.99 plus $5.95 shipping. It’s definitely worth it and better than many others IMHO at higher prices.
For me the most important feature of a metronome is the visual side of it. I think that playing to some “beep” or “click” sound thats accurately in pulse is not so helpful and is actually irritating when playing. I like metronomes that can be switched so as they don’t make any sound and have some visual representation for the pulse.
I think metronomes might be good when practising, but the pulse of real music is always not so accurate, it changes a tiny bit all the time and that makes the music sound “real”. So ultimately i think that one must feel the real pulse of music and play like that and not with 100 percent accurate pulse. Also when playing with other players, I think that seeing what other players do is at least as important as hearing what they do, when it comes to pulse.
So IMHO the old style metronomes that has this swinging thing in those are the best, cause they have good visual representation for pulse and you don’t actually have to follow it precisely.
I have a DB-12 Dr. Beat. I don’t know how much it costs, as it was a gift, but it’s probably reasonably priced. You can set it to different time signatures and the first downbeat of each measure is marked by a differently pitched click. You can set it on quarter notes, eith notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, a rest-eith note rest-eithnote pattern, and a triplet pattern in wich the middle note is a rest. It has a tuning note and a timer/stopwatch. There is a mute option in wich only the two lights flash to denote the beats. Most useful is the headphone jack, which helps if you’re playing louder than the metranome.
during the easy bits and speed up 
during the hard bits of tunes 
.