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are all tuners created equal?


mbengs1

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They definitely aren't equal but most do a decent job so long as you're instrument is set up properly and intonated. If you use a tuner for setups you want one with the best accuracy. If you look at the specs, you'll often see a plus or minus error percentage in cents. The lower that error percentage, the more accurate the tuner is. Everything else is just bells and whistles.

 

Electronic tuners have crystal clock that sets up an internal tone the strings match themselves to. The more accurate that clock the better the tuning. The exception of course are the older strobe tunes that used tube oscillators instead of crystals to create an internal pitch. The pitch of the oscillator vs the pitch of the sound would vary motors speed. When it did the spinning disk varied speed and the grid on the disk showed the audio frequency variations.

 

This is much like a wagon wheel in a movie film would seem to spin backwards or stand still as it got close to the film shutter speed. Like any tube gear they needed to be calibrated and maintained to work well. Electronic tuners eliminated allot of that.

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I have five different electronic tuners and an A440 tuning fork. Out of the box without any calibration my StroboFlip is dead on, one Korg is five cents sharp, the other a few cents sharp. The cheap little D'Addario headstock clip on has a hard time picking up the tuning fork even when I hold it on the tuner and I haven't checked the in line tuner in my Vox pedal thing. but its probably good enough.

 

The nice thing about the Korgs is that they are easy to calibrate. They are also chromatic which is a necessity for me since I play in all kinds of altered tunings. The StroboFlip stays in my shop where I use it for adjusting intonation and various setup chores. The Korg's stay in my music room

 

I was at a bluegrass jam the other day and every instrument had its own electronic tuner clipped to it - knowing how much difference they can have out of the box its no wonder the group plays out of tune with each other LOL.

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I was at a bluegrass jam the other day and every instrument had its own electronic tuner clipped to it - knowing how much difference they can have out of the box its no wonder the group plays out of tune with each other LOL.

 

I'd go with a strobe type tuner but tuners of any kind are powerless against intonation deaf players. I recently had to suffer some perfectly good steel soured by some guy oblivious to the temperament of his Bigsby'd guitar.

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like strings' date=' it doesnt really matter what brand as long as its famou[/b']s. what tuner would you recommend? i've considered the boss tu-3, the tc polytune and the korg pitchblack.

 

If you can't tell the difference in strings you probably won't know the difference in tuners either so buy a cheap one.

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Just having a tuner (of any type) is so much of an improvement from when I first started playing. I remember my high school band back in the 70's would spend about half our practice time just trying to get in tune with each other...

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like strings' date=' it doesnt really matter what brand as long as its famous. what tuner would you recommend? i've considered the boss tu-3, the tc polytune and the korg pitchblack.[/quote']

 

Lots of "famous" or "well known" products are terrible, just saying.

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on my board at rehearsal i have a korg pitchblack with which i'm pretty happy

 

at home i have now a snark sn-2 or so, which is absolutely great (got the recommendation from the acoustic guitar guys here)

but my better half has done a clean up at home and since then i can't find it anymore :D

 

i don't do any setups or calibration work so the absolute accuracy is not so important for my use

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I think a strobe with various preset and custom temperaments can work well in performance too. Multiple guitars could be tuned for their specific uses be it lead, rhythm, major, minor, pentatonics, power chords - and those are just standard intonation issues.

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I know people will pile on and accuse me of having cloth ears etc but isnt +/- 3% good enough? The limitations of the instrument, your technique and the limitations of your amplification system are going to do more damage than that. Arent they?

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The Planet waves strobe tuner is the best electronic strobe tuner for the money A good alternative if you cant afford a Peterson which has always been an industry standard for Luthiers and Professionals.

 

The Polytune is really cool too because you have polyphonic tuning. Strum across all 6 strings and tune whichever strings need to be tuned. This is really revolutionary for tuners. All others require one string to be picked and all others muted.

 

Anyone who uses a floating whammy bar knows what happens when you try and tune one. The springs have a balanced pull against the strings. When you tune one string up the others go down in pitch making the job of getting all 6 in tune allot more difficult. With polyphonic tuning you're able to see those 5 go flat when you tune one up or go sharp when you tune one down.

 

This isn't just a problem with whammy bars either. Many thin necks and weak body joints suffer from this same phenomenon. The way I look at it is if you can buy a tuner that gives you .1 cent accuracy a nearly the same price as another that's has 3 cent accuracy, You'll get better results and go longer without having to tune, but you should realize, even if a tuner was dead on perfect, the tempered tuning of a fretted instrument is not perfect and even the temperature of your hands warming the string can cause the steel to expand by 3~5 cents going from room temp to body temp. This is why its important to warm up your stings before using any tuner.

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I know people will pile on and accuse me of having cloth ears etc but isnt +/- 3% good enough? The limitations of the instrument' date=' your technique and the limitations of your amplification system are going to do more damage than that. Arent they?[/quote']

I guess it depends. Are you talking about the whole guitar, as in all strings are 3% off in the same direction or maybe one or two strings are off 3%? The low E on my Fernandes was about 5 cents sharp at the 3rd fret according to either my Snark clip-on or my Wittner and couldn't be intonated properly, and I could tell. It drove me nuts and I finally sold the guitar.

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I guess it depends. Are you talking about the whole guitar, as in all strings are 3% off in the same direction or maybe one or two strings are off 3%? The low E on my Fernandes was about 5 cents sharp at the 3rd fret according to either my Snark clip-on or my Wittner and couldn't be intonated properly, and I could tell. It drove me nuts and I finally sold the guitar.

 

I think your example is a particular issue with that guitar.

 

I was alluding more to the deficiencies of the guitar as an instrument. Tempered tuning is an issue in itself to the extent you could argue tuning one string relative to another is more important than tuning each string individually. Add to that the variances in fretting pressure and atmospherics and you possibly compound the problem. Then start pushing the signal through an amp and you have more errors built in. I know we want to minimise those variances at each stage. If we have to accept the weakest link in this chain of errors, is 3 cent swing in measured tuning per string a real concern?

I dont know or have a firm view, just putting It out there.

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. . . Then start pushing the signal through an amp and you have more errors built in. I know we want to minimise those variances at each stage. If we have to accept the weakest link in this chain of errors, is 3 cent swing in measured tuning per string a real concern?

I dont know or have a firm view, just putting It out there.

I was afraid you were saying that. Just how would an amp change the pitch of a note? Amplitude, phase, sure. Of course, there are also effects that rely on shifts in pitch. But an amp changing a note's pitch? Maybe this is something that happens with tube amps? If it is, I've never heard of it.

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I have a Boss TU-2 (which has been my go-to for years), a Korg Pitch-black, a Digitech Polyphonic, and an older Korg pedal tuner. I just purchased a Polytune 2 a few days ago. Of all of them, the Polytune 2 in strobe mode is by far the most accurate, IMO. My TU-2 isn't bad, but for fine-tuning, the strobe is amazing. I also own a couple of Snarks, which are nice, but if the battery dies, it's a pain to go find a replacement battery. Plus, I like having the tuner in-line, so that I can mute to change cables, tune, etc.

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I was afraid you were saying that. Just how would an amp change the pitch of a note? Amplitude, phase, sure. Of course, there are also effects that rely on shifts in pitch. But an amp changing a note's pitch? Maybe this is something that happens with tube amps? If it is, I've never heard of it.

 

Perfect signal chain, amp and speakers? Interesting.

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