Tuner, as they say, the most important pedal on your board. Through out the years, I’ve used a few tuners from the Boss TU-2/TU-3, TC Electronic Polytune, etc. When it comes to a good stage / floor tuner a few things are important.
– Readability. You NEED to see the note clearly, as well as the sharp/flat indicators
– Tracking. The tuner needs to pick up the note/string quickly
– Durability. Since the pedal is used often, it will get some abuse.
– True Bypass / Or not. Depending on your needs, you might want the pedal to be true bypass or you may want a buffer (in my case, I prefer the buffer)
Recently, I had a chance to try out the Korg Pitchblack Polyphonic Tuner for myself, and I was quite impressed with it. First off, note indicator letter.. is absolutely huge. No problem seeing the note. Also the sharp/flat indicator is above in a strip and is large and easy to read as well. The Korg picked up the note very quickly. The other great feature is the polyphonic tuning. TC Electronic was the first to come out with this feature and others are starting to follow. Basically, you strum all of your strings and it will show you where they are in relationship of being in tune. This is a great feature when playing live.
Sometimes you hear something off on stage. Either you or a band mate is out of tune or someone hit a wrong note giving that impression. Normally, between the song I would check my guitar, which would involve me checking all the strings. With the polyphonic feature, you simple click the tuner on, strum all strings, and you can quickly see you’re ‘okay’ or it will show you the string that’s out of tune and you adjust from there. Major time saver. Normally, when I’m tuning, I would use the chromatic function.
Here is their official product video of this tuner:
Things to note about the polyphonic mode. This is a program to tune based on known tunings. Here is a listing of what it can do – Flat (5 Semitones), Capo (7 Semitones), and Drop-D tunings are also supported. For example, in the band I’m playing in, we have songs in a funky F# tuning. The polyphonic mode will not understand this, so to tune, I would need to pick each string individually. That’s not a problem.. all the other polyphonic would react this way, and chromatic mode picks them up quickly.
You can pick up the Korg Pitchblack Polyphonic Tuner for only $88.83 at Amazon.com!
