What are the best tools to tune a guitar?

Modern tuning devices use one of four methods to help you tune a guitar – chromatic, strobe, polyphonic and microphone. Here’s a brief overview of how each approach works.

Chromatic tuning

Chromatic tuners come in many shapes and sizes but they effectively show the pitch of a string through vibration (each pitch has a specific vibration). In essence as long as you know the note you want for each string, they’re very easy to use. A chromatic tuner can return all 12 notes in an octave and is most commonly used by guitarists to tune a guitar.

Strobe

Strobe tuners are the most accurate guitar tuners available. They use an LED strobe light that flickers at a different frequency for each note. When you play a note, the tuner will try to match the frequency of the string to its internal reference for that note; if the frequency matches and the string is correctly tuned, the display will light up green (it could be a different colour depending on the manufacturer).

If there is a slight difference in frequency, the tuner will display the note you are closest to (in the chromatic scale) and the strobe will flash to the left or right of the display (in another colour, e.g. blue or red) to indicate whether the string is sharp or flat.

Some strobe tuners use an illuminated ring to tune a guitar. In this case, if the ring appears stationary, the string is correctly tuned. If the ring rotates clockwise, the string is flat and anticlockwise, it’s sharp. Strobe tuners too come in a couple of forms as we will see later.

Polyphonic

Polyphonic tuners show you the pitch of all the strings on your instrument. To tune a guitar using a polyphonic tuner, you simply strum across all strings on your guitar and the tuner will give you the tuning for each string, whether that is sharp or flat of a semi tone. Tuning becomes an iterative process of strum – adjust string (single string mode) – strum – adjust string and so on until complete.

Microphone

Microphone tuners are the least accurate type of a tuner. They use a microphone to determine the pitch of the string and tell you whether it’s sharp or flat. Vagaries of the mic quality, other ambient noise and the distance of the mic from the guitar mean that at best, it’s only an approximate way to tune a guitar. Definitely not a way to tune a guitar in a noisy room but possibly the best thing to use if you are caught short without a decent tuner. FREE apps are available on your mobile phone for download. I don’t recommend this is the only tuner you have.

I mentioned in the last section that guitar tuners come in different shapes and sizes; to keep things simple, I’ve divided the options into eight categories. Here’s my selection of the best buys to tune a guitar by category.

Clip-on guitar tuners

This type of guitar tuner clips onto your headstock. It measures the frequency of the vibrations through the guitar and tells you the note you’re playing. They work on an acoustic, electric or bass guitar. If you’re in a quiet situation, clip-on guitar tuners are fairly accurate. However, they’re more or less useless in an ‘on stage’ situation where other instruments will vibrate the guitar you’re tuning and give you a false reading.

Most clip-on guitar tuners will show you when a whole tone is achieved by changing the colour of the display. When the tuner shows the string is flat, you tighten it by turning the tuning peg anticlockwise. When you’re sharp, turn the tuning peg clockwise. To tune a guitar, it’s always best to tune up to a note, i.e., if you’re sharp, go flat before tuning up to the desired note.

Clip-on guitar tuners can be chromatic, strobe or polyphonic.

These are the best clip-on guitar tuners I’ve found in the budget to premium price ranges.

SNARK – £12.99- £19.99 (most popular in my experience)

D’Addario/ Planet Waves – £9.00- £19.00

TGi – £4.99

BOSS – £8.99- £15.00

Fender – £9.00- £13.99

Korg – £13.00- £35.00 (includes chromatic and strobe tuners)

TC Electronic (Polytune ‘strum’ tuner all strings) £32.00

Peterson strobe tuners – £50

Plug-in/pedal tuners

Plug-in or pedal tuners are by far the best way to tune a guitar because they isolate the output of the instrument from any ambient noise; to use one, all you need is an electric instrument with an output jack.

Plug-in tuners look like an effects pedal and when you use one, they normally cut the signal to the amplifier so you can tune a guitar without either interference or telling the world what you’re doing. Plug-in tuners are most commonly strobe or chromatic; strobe tuners are more expensive. Some are polyphonic too (Polytune for instance).

These are the best products available for a variety of budgets:

TC Electronics – Polytune £79.99

Boss – TU3 – £65

D’Addario – Pedal Tuner – £65

Korg – Pitchblack – £35

Pitchblack (strobe) – £79.99

Artec – Big Dots Matrix – £15

Behringer – TU300 – £22

Snark – Pedal – £40

Peterson – Strobostomp (strobe) – £110

Microphone tuners

I’m not going to spend any time on microphone tuners; if you need a free tuner, check out the apps available for your smart phone.

Gizmos

There are gizmos (generic name for tools and inventions) you can attach to the tuning peg of the string you want to tune. All you have to do is give the device the note for each string and it automatically winds the string to that pitch.

One example I’ve used is the Roadie Tuner at around £100; certainly quite an expensive option to tune a guitar.

‘Old school’ tuners

Pitch pipes

When I started playing the guitar, I was given a set of pitch pipes (like a six-note harmonica) and while you blew into the pipe you adjusted the string’s pitch to match the pitch of the note you were hearing from the pipe; much like a strobe tuner in your head (but without the accuracy). These do help you develop ‘an ear’ to tune a guitar. Some older plug-in tuners will also provide the tone generation feature as well for this reason.

Tuning fork

Another old school method is a tuning fork. You use the tuning fork to match the note of one string by ear; you then use the Interval method described later in this blog, to tune the rest of the strings.

From the keyboard

If you’re playing along with a keyboard it is actually best to calibrate your guitar tuning to the keyboard. Some guitar tuners can be calibrated in this way. If the guitars and bass, etc. do this (they are much easier to tune) the band will be in tune together.

To tune a guitar from the keyboard, you simply play a note on the keyboard then either calibrate your tuner accordingly or tune by ear for that note and Interval tune the rest of the strings from that point.

Intervals from each other

One of the fasted and easiest ways to tune a guitar is by intervals of the strings to each other.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Tune the 6^th string (thickest string) to pitch
2. Now match the 5^th string’s pitch, when played open, to the pitch of the 6^th string when played at the 5^th
3. Next, match the 4^th string played open to the pitch of the 5^th string played at the 5^th
4. Then the 3^rd string played open to the pitch of the 4^th string played at the 5^th
5. For the 2^nd string there’s a change of pattern. What you do here is match the 2^nd string open to the 3^rd string played at the 4^th
6. Finally, you tune the 1^st string to the 2^nd string played at the 5^th

This method of interval tuning will give you standard tuning.

Drop tuning using the interval tuning method

If you want to drop tune a guitar, start by tuning the 6^th string to the desired pitch. Then match the 5^th string open to the 7^th fret of the 6^th string. After that follow the method for standard interval tuning from points 3.-6 above.

Using Harmonics to tune a guitar

Here’s how you tune using harmonics for standard tuning:

1. Tune the 6^th string using any of the tuning devices I describe above. Now play the 6^th string above the 5^th fret and let it ring; the harmonic tone should match exactly with the harmonic of the 5^th string above the 7^th You will hear if the target string (5^th) is sharp or flat and can adjust it until it is matched.
2. Next, play the harmonic above the 5^th fret of the 5^th It should match 7^th fret harmonic of the 4^th string. Adjust the 4^th string until it matches.
3. Follow by playing the 5^th fret harmonic of the 4^th string to match 7^th fret harmonic of the 3^rd Adjust 3^rd string until it is matching.
4. After that, the pattern changes and you can’t use the harmonics method for tuning the 2^nd string, so interval tune the fretted 4^th fret of the 3^rd string to match the open 2^nd string (see interval tuning above)
5. Now play the harmonic of the 2^nd string above the 5^th fret and it should be matched to the harmonic of the 1^st string above the 7^th Adjust the 1^st string.

Using harmonics, is a great way to tune a guitar if you haven’t got a tuning device. At very least, the guitar will be in tune with itself and you can practise playing on your own.

So that’s about it. I’ve taken you through the tools available to you to tune a guitar. From the incredibly accurate to the ‘good enough for practice options, there’s something out there for all budgets and situations. Thanks for reading.

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