Guitar Tuner For Doing Bridge Setups?

[kenbennett]

Hmmm... I'm not quite sure what to do with these numbers you mention? I mean what would be the minimum accuracy for doing a decent setup?

Also you mentioned tuners that cost $129 which means that here it would cost like $300. That is some leap from the $10 Snark and furthermore way above my price range.

So again I am looking for the CHEAPEST tuner that is accurate enough to do a decent setup. Even if it isn't fancy or meant to last for decades.

The numbers are simply for comparing the accuracy of various tuners.

In my opinion, you can do a decent setup with any tuner.

The quirks of the guitar, mentioned by PTChristopher and others, i.e. the effect of string pressure, the effect of strings stretching by different amounts at different frets, the effects of gravity if you are holding the guitar in the playing position, the effect of bending the neck slightly when your guitar is on the bench with the neckrest anywhere buy directly under the fret you are checking... All of those things can introduce errors that are greater than the inherent inaccuracy (tolerance) of the tuner.

Use whatever tuner you have. Practice your setup technique to the point where your actions are consistent. Then worry about whether you need a better tuner or not.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I use gStrings for Android as my "on the fly" tuner. It seems to be quite accurate. I use the ad-supported version which is free.

On my pedal board I have a Korg Pitchblack which is nice too.

Depending on which computer you have access to, perhaps a software tuner is a good option if it is mainly to be used for intonation. I'm a Mac user and have used the built-in tuner in Garageband to set intonation.

I also use gStrings for casual lessons if I don't have my Korg GA-30 on hand. I think it's a pretty great FREE tuner. I'd say try one of these inexpensive tuners and then let your ear tell you if it's close enough.

[Patrick2]

I have a BOSS TU12EX. Last tuner I'll ever buy . . . unless it dies or gets stole.. Inwhich case I'd replace it with a the same one.

By the way .. . that really did look like a booger in that guy's ear. Just sayin' . . . . . .

Chill, aniss1001. . . . .

[JimBobWay]

I have a few vintage guitars that are really tricky, despite my best efforts to keep them stable and strung consistently, so I bought one of these and it has served me well. But for the 'easy' ones, and really for all at the end of the day, it does come down to the ear (& heart & soul). But that photo may well be in violation of Mr. B's stated standards & practices...

[aniss1001]

Damnit now it got all complicated. I just wanted a tuner

I can't get any software tuners to work properly. The tuner on my Cube is VERY inaccurate and it only shows whether you're flat or sharp. No indication of how much. I can't work with that at all.

So I think I'll go for the only one I've been able to find used around here. The one I linked to before. Any input on that would be great. I checked the manual and it says the accuracy is +/- 1 cent. I guess that will do for now. If not I'll sell it and buy a better one.

I checked the prices and the tuners mentioned all cost $100+ around here (BOSS TU12EX, Peterson StroboClip, Korg OT120).

The Snark is actually available in Buenos Aires for only 100 pesos ($23). Add 50 pesos to that (I believe) to have it shipped here. Still not bad. But I noticed there are 2 types. A clip-on and "normal" one. Only the clip-on is available here it seems. Which one were y'all referring to? Are they equally good/accurate?

....It is somewhat funny to use a modern accurate tuner and to then use this tuner to match the 12th fret harmonic to the 12th fret note....

OK?! The setup manuals I've seen do exactly that. Including the one written by the rather respected luthier Ron Kirn I believe.

Anyhoo I will re-read the setup advice y'all have provided later on and keep it in mind when I do my setup.

Thanks again to y'all

[Dad3353]

I use the 'clip-on' blue Snark (no built-in mic, vibration only...); I believe the clip-ons to all have the same accuracy, although I've no way of telling the accuracy of any tuner, anyway, and don't see how it helps me if I knew... I hear when my chords are in tune or not, and adjust accordingly.

[PTChristopher]

>>> I've no way of telling the accuracy of any tuner, anyway, and don't see how it helps me if I knew

Douglas,

Well yeah, that's the thing. If it works for your ears, then who cares about the accuracy spec.?

Its not like the spec. "proves" that you should be unhappy with your tuner.

Now for setup work, where some speed is of some help, it can be a problem to find that you can vary the pitch quite noticeably within the indicated "on target" range of a tuner.

On a Snark, or Korg GA-30, or many similarly accurate tuners - I can really hear the difference within a range of pitches that all register as correct. While with a Peterson StroboClip, I find that the signal is only dead-on target within a narrower range than I can hear.

Now in a live playing situation, the Peterson can be a little irritatingly twitchy, while the Snark says - "definitely close enough" now stop goofing around and play a song.

Both have their place in my opinion.

Chris

[PTChristopher]

[Originally Posted by PTChristopher ] >>>....It is somewhat funny to use a modern accurate tuner and to then use this tuner to match the 12th fret harmonic to the 12th fret note....

[Aniss] >>>The setup manuals I've seen do exactly that. Including the one written by the rather respected luthier Ron Kirn I believe.

I do not want to criticize anyone's recommendations. It will work to use a tuner to compare the 12th fret harmonic to the 12th fret note.

But if I may:

The 12th fret harmonic was used for a very long time as a simple way to have a unison comparison to check bridge compensation.

We want the 12th fret note to be as close as possible to an exact octave above the open string. And is is almost always the case (there are rare exceptions) that the 12th fret harmonic is, for all practical purposes, exactly an octave above the open string note. So we use the harmonic to give us a unison target for the fretted 12th fret note.

But once you have a tuner, why not simply tune the open string, then test the fretted note at the 12th? Who cares about the unison harmonic? We simply want a fretted octave to be as accurate as possible.

And,...

Since we have a tuner,...

Strings are imperfect. Fret wear is imperfect. Fret crown shapes are imperfect. Neck relief adds some slight slight non-linearity as well. And yes, fret position can be sometimes slightly off.

So, why use only the 12th fret octave note to set bridge compensation? I can not count how many times the note at the 12th fret happened to be notably sharper or flatter (slightly, but it's there) than most for the notes between the 7th and 17th frets.

So if the setup was only done by checking the 12th fret note, the overall accuracy would be reduced. Not a huge deal, but we are going for "superb" within the capabilities of the tools at hand, right?

Anyway, I think there is nothing wrong with the neo-tradition of using a tuner for the 12th harmonic and the 12th fretted notes. It is just a needlessly limited use of the tuner as a tool.

And now a stupid story:

My grandparents (and probably my great-grandparents) lived with electric lighting as opposed to kerosene or oil lamps. But most of the lights in their house were turned on by stumbling through the dark room then turning a little key-shaped switch that imitated the wick control on an oil or kerosene lamp.

Nothing wrong with that, so long as you don't mind the slog through the dark to get to a switch that can just as easily be put next to the doorway.

It was, nonetheless, a somewhat humorous use of technology to imitate the function of older technology.

This is how I see using a tuner to check a 12th fret harmonic (which does not matter in any way whatsoever), AND not using the same tuner to check notes other than the 12th, when checking other notes is easy, and can reduce and eliminate errors caused by a 12th fret note that happens to be off a bit vs. most other notes on the fingerboard.

Note: I mention the 7th to the 17th fret range because this range is most directly affected by bridge compensation. Notes outside that range are strongly affected by factors other than the bridge and can give misleading results.

Still my own views, and definitely open for discussion.

Chris

[aniss1001]

I've no way of telling the accuracy of any tuner, anyway, and don't see how it helps me if I knew... I hear when my chords are in tune or not, and adjust accordingly.

That makes perfect sense to me when we're talking tuning the guitar. Which is why I have no problem with using the Cube's built in tuner even though I sometimes have to tweak it a bit using my ears afterwards.

For setups it makes no sense to me at all.

Anyway thanks for the info

[coolvinny]

Just by coincidence, I bought a regular (non-mic) Snark a few weeks ago. I'm very happy with it. It is compact, easy to read, "close enough", and I like how it is not a 2-piece design. Those are always coming apart and I was actually happy when I finally lost my old 2-piecer...a Korg or something.

[feral guitar]

switched to snark after years with the white boss pedal tuner.
nice to have a tuner not in line to dgrade your tone.
snark looks dumb on the headstock, tho -
i like to tune and take it off (i'm so into shobiz )

[Klatu]

Just by coincidence, I bought a regular (non-mic) Snark a few weeks ago. I'm very happy with it. It is compact, easy to read, "close enough", and I like how it is not a 2-piece design. Those are always coming apart and I was actually happy when I finally lost my old 2-piecer...a Korg or something.

What do you mean by "2 piece"? By the way, I also use the Snark Tuner and love it.

[Eddie Lang]

switched to snark after years with the white boss pedal tuner.
nice to have a tuner not in line to dgrade your tone.
snark looks dumb on the headstock, tho -
i like to tune and take it off (i'm so into shobiz )

Then, perhaps you'd like one of these.

Amazon.com: D'Addario NS Micro Clip-On Tuner: Musical Instruments

[tribeo]

We want the 12th fret note to be as close as possible to an exact octave above the open string. And is is almost always the case (there are rare exceptions) that the 12th fret harmonic is, for all practical purposes, exactly an octave above the open string note.

...

Chris

Just curious, what might cause one of these rare exceptions? The only thing I could think of is if the string is faulty or damaged and has non-uniform mass along the length. Is there anything else that might cause a 12th fret harmonic to not be exactly an octave of the open string?

[monkmiles]

No liar, you are not!

Now you are using the PitchLab app whenever you are doing intonation. You don't even own the Pitchblack anymore...

Like you, I used to use the gstrings app but switched to pitchlab. And then I have a snark.

[Patrick2]

Just curious, what might cause one of these rare exceptions? The only thing I could think of is if the string is faulty or damaged and has non-uniform mass along the length. Is there anything else that might cause a 12th fret harmonic to not be exactly an octave of the open string?

I believe what Chris is talking about as a rare exception, would be an improperly adjusted or placed bridge base/saddle assembly, a poorly cut nut, a poorly cut wood bridge saddle . . . worst case scenario . . frets installed at improper measurements/spacings . . . (almost impossible to do now-a-days).

[coolvinny]

What do you mean by "2 piece"? By the way, I also use the Snark Tuner and love it.

Some tuners have 2 distinct parts: the part that clips to the guitar, and then the actual tuner mechanism part that attaches to the clipped-on part, usually by a small plastic ball socket connection. I don't like those, though I suffered through one for about 2 years...

[nickyboy]

i had a snark thrown in with a deal a few weeks back. A cracking little tuner!
I've got a fancy peterson clip on tuner and tbh - there's not a lot between them!

[rexmiguechidoto]

Free nice strobe tuner for PC

LS Tune | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

[campusfive]

Again, I like the Snark SN-8 for general tuning needs, and I have the Peterson Strobe tuning app on my iphone and ipad for fine tuning.

That said, I am starting to not dig how the normal placement of the snark on the headstock often covers the logo. It's surely vanity, but ever since I got a real ES-150 instead of the "frankenstein"-faux-ES-150 I had been playing, I've wanting to show off the headstock logo in pictures. It's pretty funny how convincing my fake appeared in pictures, especially before the pickguard broke. Unless you saw the thinline body depth, you might not notice that it was a fake, at least when it comes to the quality of pics posted on facebook of our gigs.

Because of that I tried the Planet Waves NS-micro tuner. However, I found it difficult to get it sufficiently tight against the headstock to get a good reading of the vibrations, without risking damage to the finish. I really wanted to like it, but it just didn't work nearly as well as the snark.

[edh]

I have a snark tuner and recently tested it against an A440 tuning fork. It correctly heard the fork. Not flat or sharp. So I would say it is very accurate.

[PTChristopher2]

Old thread. I got a notice on an old e-mail address. I wonder what ever happened to Aniss, the OP.

Anyway:

[Tribeo]>>> Just curious, what might cause one of these rare exceptions [wherein the 12th fret harmonic was not a perfect octave above the open string]? The only thing I could think of is if the string is faulty or damaged and has non-uniform mass along the length. Is there anything else that might cause a 12th fret harmonic to not be exactly an octave of the open string?

Wowie, plumbing the depths of string vibe.

In all cases I think we would do well to consider that we are talking about reasonably measurable (even if not noticeable to most players) deviations.

In my view you mentioned one possible cause - non-uniform mass of the string.

String stiffness can also be a problem. For ex. if you ran a really fat plain G (like an .022), then the stiffness of the string at the ends, and even overall, could send the octave harmonic noticeably off, particularly on the attack.

Another is the bridge or nut geometry. Small errors at the exit point of the vibrating portion of the string, can have differing effects depending (much like string stiffness) on the amplitude near the string ends. The root vibration has a lower amplitude near the string ends than would a hard-hit octave harmonic. So, the stiffness of the string can have more of an effect on the octave harmonic - particularly the way some tend to sledgehammer it when setting bridge compensation.

(In my opinion, there is no reason at all to include the harmonic in a setup. I suppose if you drive a horse-drawn carriage and churn your own butter then you might stay with the harmonic for old-times sake. Otherwise it offers nothing in terms of an optimized setup.

Regarding my original comment, I was really just trying to be careful to note that in the case of extremely careful, close tolerance measurements, one could note that the 12th fret harmonic might be not exactly double the frequency of the open string. This is a rather unusual condition. Nonetheless, if this is the case, it is worth addressing the reason.

In my opinion.

And greetings to Aniss if he also got an e-mail noting that this old thread was opened.

Chris

[2bornot2bop]

No love here for the Polytune 2?

Well, it's the last tuner I'll ever buy!