Park ToolTM-1 - Spoke Tension Meter Tool

Great tool to quieten my ride and get the wheel true

I would only get this if your serious about working on your own wheels (and maybe your friends) all the time, due to the price. It can really help find stretched spikes that may not be obvious if your just trying to straighten a wheel up and having a hard time getting it right. Yes there are cheaper ones out there, but I personally have not had any problems so far with park tools so would choose this over other brands.

It works easily enough but is massively overpriced. You probably don't need a tension meter; all the wheels I've built in the last 20 years turned out to have good tension of 120 to 150kgf. However, some modern rims have a lowish maximum tension recommended by the manufacturer and it saves you guessing.

The park tool tension meter is adequate for the amateur, it is not consistently accurate and therefore it is important to take several readings per spoke. That said I have used it quite a lot now and each time i get better at using it and consequently my wheels are pretty bang on now. I would like to try it side by side with a professional meter but haven't as yet committed to the extra cost (around £200 as an average) but I may well do one day soon.If you are the patient type and you really need to be with bicycle mechanics then this tool will do what is required and you should be satisfied.

Positives: Works well, easy to understand and work with - I set 28 spokes to around the same tension in about 15 mins although not able to get a clear target value from the spoke manufacturer to aim for. Easy to resell.Negatives 16" wheels - will only work on radial patterns, cannot use on the interlaced rear wheel of my Brompton as insufficient clear length to fit the meter. The tension posts are 106mm apart and really need 116mm of clear spoke to comfortably get a reading Expensive for the amount of use I will get from it.

This is a comparative tool and you have to refer to tables to get the absolute measurement. However when checking a wheel you should use the associated app to get a proper appreciation of the readouts. Use in conjunction with a wheel dish guage because although you might have a trued wheel the hub position may be out and when you sit on the bike the anomaly will show up. As an example I got a new front wheel that was trued but the spoke tensions of left and right spokes did not approximate each other and when the wheel was set against the hub, the dish of the wheel was out - a gap of 1/4 inch on the rim on the left side.

Robust and ergonomically great. It does not come with through axle compatible wheel clamps though. These have to be bought separately.

An advice for new buyer. Invest in qood quality tools like parktool and you wont regret