I have searched the forums and there are tons of posts about metronomes but most seem to be advocating their ues during practise. Since I am already sold on that – I use an ancient and falling-apart one that is loosing its voice – I wonder what brand you might use?
My wish list is pretty simple:
a CLICK that is loud enough to be heard over a set of pipes. If it has volumn control then extra goodness
my current one goes from 40-208 bpm
if it uses a TONE instead of a click then the tone should be adjustable
My iPhone has a cheap ($2?) metronome that works through headphones, has all the bells and whistles, plus a tap counter (if you tap to the beat of a recorded tune it will tell you how fast it is.) You would not hear it over the pipes without headphones.
I bought a Korg MA30 yesterday. For those that suggested it, I am trying to decide if the thing is “broken”. It does work but there are two issues that have dissapointed me. First, it was not as loud as I expected. Either my half set is amazing loud or my hearing is shot. I can not hear this over chanter and drones.
I switched to the headphone option and discovered that the volumn control does not really work for earphones. Rather it “does” work but the volumn is constantly on “high” through the whole thumbwheel volumn control motion except for the last tiny bit… and then it is silent.
Hi Dean!
I have had no trouble to hear the beats when I’m playing my half set to MA30. I have never plugged in headphones so I don’t know how well the volume control works, but I’ll try it out and let you know. But with your description I would guess that something isn’t as it should with your unit.
Return it to the store if you’re not pleased with it, try another one and see if it works better for you. If not you may consider the little more expensive Korg KDM-2. I have an older version of this metronome (KDE-1) with the same powerfull little speaker and it is quite loud, also have a LED that will give you the beats if you can’t have the sound on.
I don’t use KDM much as I think the MA30 works just fine and is more handy.
Hi Dean!
Sorry for my late reply, forgot to check back before we went on summer vacation. I guess you have solved your problem by now but for anyone else checking up on this in the future I just wanted to confirm that the volume control on the MA30 has no effect on the headphone output. However the speaker volume on my unit can be quite loud, I tend to use it just above half max.
The accordion player in our ceili band had one, I tried it out, neither of us liked it much, the vibration was just too vague, didn’t really give a clear demarcation of the beat, more of a fzzt fzzt fzzt sort of feeling rather than tick tick tick. Seems great in theory, and coming from Peterson, I had high hopes. Of course, many people like them from what I read, so best to give it a try and decide for yourself.