Originally Posted by
adipe
"best bang for the buck" is using zip ties, a proper spoke key (which should cost a tenner or so) and a trained ear (any ear can be trained) and THEN spending some time to do your research with regards to wheel building. and if you want to invest some more money then just get yourself a laser leveling tool and use your brain a bit. as for getting by without a tension meter you need a bit more research to understand how to translate from sound (Hz) to kgf for the spoke linear density and vibrating distance (from the cross to the nipple). google tone generator.
invest in a proper truing stand - with dials - if you expect to work for hundreds of hours on wheels. if not then better spend your resources on other things, truing stands with no dials are not really worth the money. i mean do you expect to use a crappy truing stand for 20...50 hours in the next 5 years? if you expect to have less than 20 hours of work then a crappy truing stand is just crap. why not trust someone who has better tools? is it because tools are not everything? then what you should really do - if you really want to do a good work - is to find a cheaper AND BETTER alternative to a crappy (no dials) truing stand so you can do a better job WITH MEASUREMENTS done at the rim and spoke tension for each spoke. that is because it takes too much time to achieve zero radial runout - in which case you still need to take into account spoke tension variance after that zero radial runout is achieved so that you turn back from that zero radial runout because it does not make sense to have zero radial runout unless spoke tension variance is nil.
if you still don't understand the importance for the dials on a proper truing stand then you should give up building/repairing wheels.