In the old days, players would often tune up to the guitar player or the lead player in a given ensemble. (Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)īefore we get into the tuners themselves, let’s talk about a few aspects of guitar tuners and a some common tuning problems. In this post, I wanted to share some of my favorites and the pros and cons of each. Throughout my years of playing guitar professionally, I have tried countless different guitar tuners from clip on tuners to tuner pedals in various different musical situations. Much like a guitar pick or a guitar capo, guitar tuners are largely a matter of preference. For these reasons, it’s important to have a good, solid guitar tuner for your particular musical situation. Other than the various Turbo Tuners, I bought all the rest for less than $35 each, and the NS tuners for around $10 each.I often refer to guitars as “living, breathing things” because they are susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity which can affect the playability of your guitar and the ability to keep your guitar in tune. I never have an issue with doubled strings being out from each other with any of these tuners, but all my instruments are meticulously set up. Fastest tuner, and more accurate than even the Peterson line. My friends and I noticed the speed of note recognition in various shootout videos, especially when the tuners were being used simultaneously, and that difference in speed showed up when we have tried it ourselves.įinally, for recording or live fussiness, the Turbo Tuner wins. These have the same accuracy as the Peterson line, but react *instantly*. Next, either a Korg Sledgehammer Custom or Crescendo ZenStrobe for headstock use for more accuracy with doubled courses, or a Korg CA Custom. I have a few different tuners for different needs.įirst, all instruments have a Planet Waves NS Headstock Tuner in the pocket, placed on the headstock for gigs and casual play. thank you for passing along the information. I did not take into account the harmonics with the clip on tuners. Sunburst, thank you for that explanation. and thank you Sunburst, I learned a ton of info in that reply that I did not know, and all of it will help. The Unitune looks pretty large especially compared to the micro tuner, but the Peterson tuner is really big.Īnother vote for unitune and or a polytune-they do not eat battery life like some snarks do either. I was not familiar with the Unitune and in doing a quick search ran across a thread comparing the Unitune and Peterson. They have come out with a version that mounts to the screw of you tuner to eliminate that issue. The one issue with the micro tuner is it will leave (at least on a really nice mandolin) about a nickel sized circle/ring from the rubber foot. I really like the size and ability to be out of the way and out of sight. I have been using the D'Addario micro tuner for the past couple of years. I thought they were reliable and accurate. I used Korg tuners for my mandolin and my daughters violin/fiddles. the worst part was it was not accurate from the get go. I did not like the size, shape and they seem very fragile where the arm and tuner connect. I bought a Snark tuner on a Black Friday sale and hated it. That tends to make the fundamental stronger and the harmonics weaker. Plucking the string near it's center (12th fret area) can help. Sorry for the redundant info.Īnother thing I forgot to mention. Looks like I didn't fully read Tom's post before starting to type. Maybe there are tuners that reject harmonics better than others, but that is not added precision necessarily. If we tune well within 3 cents, that's about the best we can do, so higher precision is esoteric anyway. The precision of the tuner doesn't really have much to do with the harmonics of the note. Moving the tuner and clipping it on somewhere else will sometimes help the situation, but usually damping the string and plucking it again will eventually get you the right note. After all, it can only display one note at a time and all harmonics are present in the note. For example, D is the 5th harmonic of G, so it is not unusual for the clip-on tuner to "hear" the D instead of the G. The 4th and 5th harmonics are pretty strong when we pluck a string, and often clip-on tuners will pick up one of them instead of the fundamental.
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