Well yes and no – I’ve only really looked at the manufacturer’s tension values for carbon rims – but to be fair I only bought a tension meter for doing carbon rims and didn’t bother before that.
Mostly it seems that it is the relative tension of the spokes to each other that is important rather than the absolute value, and you are right that listening to the plucked value may be “good enough” in some cases, and you also need to have a good enough ear.
Anyway, here are couple of useful videos, the first is trials rider Ali Clarkson’s second part of his latest wheel building video (the first part is on wheel lacing). Ali builds a lot of wheels for folk, including (as far as I know) Danny MacAskill. The second is Park Tool’s video on using their app to document your wheel build.
I have a Park tension meter, however when you start to read about these things it doesn’t really stack up against ones from the likes of DT-Swiss and Sapim which are much more expensive. It is probably a case of diminishing returns though (and I suppose how much is riding on the quality of the wheel).
