Chromatic Tuner

Last Updated on Tuesday, 02 June 2009 18:29 Tuesday, 26 May 2009 19:11

A chromatic tuner will detect and display the pitch of the notes you play on your guitar strings. Using a chromatic tuner, you can tell very easily whether the pitch of the note you play is higher than, lower than or equal to the desired pitch. Some chromatic tuners even provide visual clues about whether you need to tune a string up or down.

These kinds of tuners can vary in size and complexity, though the average guitar player in the street won't have the same sophisticated needs that a profesisonal musician has in the recording studio. Whereas simple guitar tuners will tune only the six pitches used in standard guitar tuning, chromatic tuners will tune all 12 notes of the scale. Because all 12 notes are catered for, chromatic tuners can be used to tune other instruments than guitars.

Components Of A Chromatic Tuner

Chromatic tuners consist of the following components:

• microphone
• input jack (for electrical instruments)
• circuitry that detects the pitch
• a display that feeds back to the musician what note has been played. The display can take the form of an LCD display, LED lights or an analogue needle
• power supply (either from the mains or batteries)

Farida HT-75 Chromatic Tuner

One of my chromatic guitar tuners is the Farida HT-75 which is a cute little thing. It clips neatly onto the headstock of the guitar with a bulldog style clip. The backlit LCD display gows blue when the note played is in tune and red if not. Arrows tell you whether to tune up or down and the LCD display also shows what note is being played. The built in microsphone detects the note's pitch as there is no line-in.

I have a feeling that this tuner might be available only in the UK, but I may be wrong on this. Mine was a little on the expensive side at £17 (USD 27).Here's a photo of the Farida clipped to the headstock of my acoustic guitar.

Korg CA-30 Chromatic Tuner

Quite possibly the most popularchromatic tuner in the world, the Korg CA-30 is amongst the cheapest too. There is some text that boasts

Over 20 million tuners sold

That's a lot of tuners. I got mine for £10.99 (USD 17.78). The Korg is much bigger than the Farida and soesn't clip on the the headstock. There is an inbuilt microphone, but unlike the Farida, the Korg can accept an input line. Here's a very much out of focus shot of my Korg CA-30!

I laid it next to a credit card sized piece of plastic to give an idea of size. Though larger than the Farida, it's still quite small. Buy a chromatic tuner.