I want to go into this tension gauge thing a little, been thinking about it. For years, I pretty much operated along the nlerner/miamijim philosophy. Didn't own a truing stand, used a frame, tensioned by feel & sound of spokes. Built plenty of fine wheels, it really is a common sense thing mostly, once you understand the problem.

When I say I started using a tension guage, I mean I just started, only have built 2 wheels with it, just wanted to experiment. And I still agree w/nlerner/miamijim, it is unnecessary.

So far, it seems to me that it may useful in the initial stage to speed things up a little though, right after you take up all the nipple slack so that threads aren't showing. And then you put it on the stand, typically some big whoop-de-doos in the wheel at this point. Again, I've only tried this on two wheels, but it seems like at this point going around the spokes and roughly evening up the tension gets the wheel to a fairly decent baseline pretty quickly rather than the typical iterative process. After that point, I don't really have any use for the thing, not sure why I spent the money on it, just curious.

One thing to keep in mind though, is that there is not one unique set of spoke tensions for a set of spokes, hub, and rim to be in true. There are three solutions/constraints (dish, average radius, max runout) and n (>3> variables, each n being the tension of an individual spoke. So it is quite possible for a wheel to be in true w/relatively even spoke tensions all around and it is also possible for a wheel to be just as true w/a wide variation in spoke tensions. I think most would agree that the first case is more desirable, although how desirable is arguable.

Again, I'm just playing w/the tension gauge, my opinion is that it may be a bit of a productivity enhancer at that first stage of building, but I may decide it is a waste of time, sell the thing, and go back to my old ways. It certainly is not any critical component of wheelbuilding.

I also agree wholeheartedly w/using dish to add tension. When I'm hitting on all cylinders on a wheel build, a last dish adjustment around the wheel tightening the spokes 1/4 turn on the appropriate wheel side is my last operation.