I own a Tama Tension Watch and I don't really dig it. All of a sudden, AFTER I bought it, I started really tuning with my ears haha... if I had only done that before instead
I never need to use it these days. Last time I tuned my drums, which was last summer (haha, now that's a while ago) for the little project I did solo, I tuned the heads to have the exact same pitch. I think I got this from Bob Gatzen actually, and it doesn't matter if he doesn't play metal. What matters is what sound YOU want, not what sound metal SHOULD have. If I had gone by the "metal standards", I probably would have tuned it to JAW (Just Above Wrinkles) like most guys who can't tune drums do, because it always gives a fat but dead sound.
Tuning them to the same pitch gives a nice full sustained sound but no annoying ringing. The ringing comes from differently tuned heads I guess, but when they're tuned the same, it's delicious. Only drawback is that you probably should fine tune your drums pretty much every other week to maintain the pitch or it'll drop over time (In studio, you might have to even fine tune them after every song or something).
Also, another thing I was very bad at in the beginning was to hear the actual pitch of the drums. There's the overtones/harmonics and the fundamental tone, but it was very distracting and confusing as to what to listen to and what to tune after. I then realized and learned to listen after the "overall tone", which is the fundamental tone for me. The bassy tone, not those ringy overtones, fuck them. When I learned to locate that tone, I could tune all the heads to the exact same pitch with pretty good precision. The overtones could still be different from one screw to another, but the fundamental tone was to me, the same. Then I proceeded to play the kit and wow, did it sound professional or what
