Electric Guitar Tuner
There is a bit of irony surrounding electric guitar tuners: the people who need them most – beginners to intermediate guitarists – are the very people who are least likely to have or use them. Many beginners wrongfully feel electric guitar tuners are not worth the added expense. Unfortunately, these guitarists often have little experience with other musical instruments and therefore their ability to tell the difference between close but different pitches – an aspect of ear training – has not been developed. I was first exposed to the guitar in college when a friend let me borrow his guitar. After a few days, he came over to see how I was doing. I played one of the open chords I had been practicing. He literally cringed – the guitar was way out of tune. I had never really played a musical instrument before and so I lacked the ability to hear that the instrument had gone out of tune. Click Here to Buy a Great Electric Guitar Tuner Additionally, the best way for a beginner to improve his or her ear is to consistently play in tune. In fact, playing out of tune will, not surprisingly, reduce the speed at which a beginner will develop his or her ear. Throw in the fact that many beginners start with an inexpensive guitar that goes out of tune easily and you have a real recipe for frustration. For electric guitars I highly recommend the Korg Pitchblack tuner. It is the overall best tuner on the market. For many years, the Boss TU-2 was the electric guitar tuner of choice. However, the problem with the TU-2 is that its accuracy is +/- 3 cents (a cent is 1/100 of the distance between consecutive notes). Three cents is discernible by somebody with a good ear. Furthermore, if two people playing together are tuning with different TU-2 tuners, they could be as far off as 6 cents, which definitely is not good. A number of well-known professional guitarists use Peterson strobe tuners. I read an interview where Slash said he uses a Peterson. (Update: since I originally wrote this, Slash has switched over to the Korg Pitchblack tuner.) I also attended an Andy Timmons guitar clinic where he mentioned he uses one. The good thing about these tuners is that they are accurate to +/- 1 cent. But there are two bad things about Peterson tuners. First, they are too expensive for most of us. Second, they appear to have a quality-control issue. There are a number of stories on the web where people have bought these tuners and they stopped working. This situation may be okay if you are a professional guitarist and you have an endorsement from Peterson. But for rest of us, we’re better off spending our money elsewhere… In 2008, Korg released the Pitchblack tuner. This tuner combines the best of both worlds (so to speak). The Pitchblack has the accuracy of the Peterson strobe tuner with the price and quality of the Boss TU-2 tuner. Additionally, it adds some other great features such as four different modes of operation and true-bypass – which means it doesn’t make your guitar sound worse when you are not tuning. The Korg pitchblack tuner is the tuner I have on my pedalboard. I strongly recommend this tuner. |
