Remember when we trued wheels by feel, not by app?

I mean, I was digging through an old toolbox last Tuesday and found my Park Tool tension meter from like 2005. It got me thinking about my first season at a shop in Portland, where my mentor would just grab a spoke and squeeze it between his thumb and forefinger, then tell me exactly which one was loose. We did entire wheel builds that way, no gauges, no spoke calculators on a phone, just a trueing stand and a whole lot of guesswork that somehow always worked out. I'm not saying we should ditch the digital stuff, the precision is nice, but there was something about the rhythm of a shop at 6 pm, everyone talking over music, and a wheel that pinged when you spun it. Has anyone else noticed that new mechanics rely on those app-based tension readers even for a simple truing job? I'm curious if that skill is just gone now or if some shops still teach the old squeeze test.

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