dabac

There is a big part of experience and routine(and the quality of the parts) to wheel building. Once you've gotten your work pattern down pat you can get further and further in the process before breaking out the tensiometer.
As a home tinkerer I think it's impossible to reach good precision (builds are too far between and unlikely to feature the same parts) w/o the use of a meter, but I can see it happening for someone with more continuity to the process.
I built perfectly serviceable wheels w/o one, but I sure can get the tension spread a lot smaller with one.
And when I started on low spoke count wheels I probably would have messed things up real bad w/o the meter. Tensioning to 160 when your muscle memory is set to maybe 120 tops is daunting.

You're welcome!