Official Luthiers Forum!

I/ve looked at the peterson 490 strobotuner and its fairly pricey. Are there alternatives to this product at a lower price range . ? Planning to use it for nut/saddle compensation using the gore /gilet book and the standard nuts /saddles on conventional stringed instruments. Your experience and opinions would be much appreciated . Thanks in advance

Personally, Ernie - I use a BOSS TU-3 pedal - but it's my understanding there are excellent apps for smartphones to do this, including one from Peterson....

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I use the Peterson Strobotuner app on my Android. I have one of their Strobo Flip tuners on the bench but I like the app on my phone better for two reasons, it works better with acoustics and it will read out cents sharp or flat which I can use to determine how much compensation is needed.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Been using the Stroboplus HD

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I think any guitar tuner that simulates a strobe wheel will do fine. I own a Peterson Stroboclip for gigs, and it does the job.

I’m old enough to own a real Conn Strobotuner from the late 1970s. It still works great! But, that sort of tool is overkill for normal intonation work on an acoustic guitar. Just buy any good quality clip-on that simulates a strobe wheel.

I have been using a free software tuner on a windows pc called AP tuner. You need a microphone.

It is a nice big display which when you are playing around with strings and saddles is a big advantage, and gives cents difference from the note. I find it invaluable for intonation work.

It has a slight quirk in that you have to enlarge the display to get it to display the tuning needle and the cents reading.

Dave M

Another recommendation for AP tuner. If you hit the "view" menu, can you get a graph of all the harmonics as well, so you can see how out of tune they are and how the tuning varies through the duration of the note. You'll get a true appreciation of how being "in tune" is a matter of opinion!

Be aware that a lot of tuning apps have "fixes" built in that give you some sort of weighted average of the "harmonic" content, and then display that as being in tune, because there is always some level of inharmonicity. That's one (of many) reasons why some tuners read differently from others. My experience is that my ear tends to focus on the highest amplitude harmonic (which is what many "simple" tuners do by default), and that isn't necessarily the fundamental. So other "fancy" tuners often sound out of tune to me. YMMV.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

The Peterson's Strobotuner app + the piezo clip on is the tuner of choice for me. Very accurate and easy to use. Also, you can set the colors of the stripes. My friend is red/green color blind so I've set them to as even a red and green as I can just to piss him off. That alone is worth the price of admission.

The Android and iPhone tuner applications are built on 1/10th cent accuracy, which is what the Peterson 490 and 590 AutoStrobe tuners claim. We had Peterson V-SAMs on the benches when I started here, but now use dedicated iPads. Guitar Toolkit is our application in the shop for most intonation and tuning chores, but the iStroboSoft application with add-on harmonic tuning and oscilloscope applications is useful to see problems with pickups and comparing placement of the harmonics from lower strings with the fundamentals on the uppers. It's also useful to see the pitch as the fundamental and harmonics build and decay, which permits tuning and intonation to the attack, the sustain/decay, or averaged value. There is certainly a learning curve associated with the applications, and I am on the very steepest part of it, so worth canvasing the various sites for more opinions on both the unique value of a dedicated strobe tuner and applications like iStroboSoft and Toolkit. I believe we still have one V-SAM available if that is your thing, but the only interest we've seen has been steel players (the V-SAM apparently has an excellent pedal steel tuning package).

We use the iRig interface for pickup-equipped instruments and a lavaliere microphone (when the shop is noisy) or the built-in mic otherwise. Assuming a brand new iPad Pro or other tablet is purchased (we have WiFi-only iPads that are a few years old that have been repurposed to the bench), and all the iStoboSoft options exercised (~$100), that's still a bit less than the Peterson 490 at $670, and gives each bench a web interface for parts checks, spec checks, etc., as well as a soft copy of value guides, the builder's guide, and anything available as pdf or in Kindle formats.

I believe we still have one V-SAM available if that is your thing, but the only interest we've seen has been from steel players (the V-SAM apparently has an excellent pedal steel tuning package).

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Love my 490 and would never go back to anything else.

The Peterson phone apps check for accurracy against the 490 but do not give anywhere near the same view of the note.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

One of the reasons why we use iPads...ageing eyes and 5" displays do not go together! Fine for tuning, but analysis needs more screen space.

The other reasons? More ways to display the data...an oscilloscope spectrum shot with fundamental noted, individual harmonics (which is the 490/590 forte), spectrum bar graphs, and color spectrogram.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Thank you all for chiming in on your experiences with the various variables involved in achieving accurate intonation at the nut , and saddle as well as at the intervals and harmonics as trev suggested. I have run into that with the short scale on ukes . I/ve tried straight across saddles on tenors and other tenors with some compensation especially the eight string tenors. Didn/t realize that this was an area of luthiery that is well worth exploring !!! All my wood is packed and the shop will be moved to our new location this year in OKC.So in my spare time I will check all the various options to see which one is the best bang for the buck.

Another StroboPLUS HD user here. I like the big display and the price is really good.

Peterson Strobe plus HD here as well. Versatile and fairly inexpensive

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Blue Ring Acoustics
blueringacoustics.ca