Tune your acoustic, electric, bass guitar or ukulele
![Tune your acoustic, electric, bass guitar or ukulele](/media/images/guitar_tuner.webp)
Until the 20th century, tuning forks were used to tune stringed instruments (including guitars), requiring tuners to have a fine ear for music. But at the time of industrialization, much more advanced devices appeared - tuners, independently, and with high accuracy, determine the pitch of the strings. Anyone can use them today, even absolute amateurs in the field of music and sound recording.
History of guitar tuners
The ancestor of electric tuners for tuning musical instruments was the Stroboconn device, which the American company Conn has been developing for 40 years. By 1936, the development was completed and the first stroboscopic tuners began to be actively used in the musical field, including for tuning acoustic and electric guitars.
The Stroboconn device had 12 stroboscopic disks in its design, which were driven by a four-pole synchronous electric motor. He could rotate the shaft at speeds up to 1650 rpm and precisely adjusted it to the frequency of the input signal. The sound from a musical instrument was amplified and fed to a long neon tube, and a built-in temperature-compensated tuning fork produced different frequency signals that made the engine rotate at one speed or another.
The advantage of this device was complete autonomy, and the pitch was determined automatically and with high accuracy. But tangible disadvantages were the size and weight of the tuner. So, it consisted of two large cases with a total weight of 70-80 pounds (31-36 kilograms) and was most often used as a stationary device.
More than 30 years after the first stroboscopic tuner was created, Peterson Tuners launched a smaller tuner with the same principle of operation and became the world's largest manufacturer of these devices. Following it, TC Electronic, Sonic Research and Planet Waves presented their range of new models, including those producing tuners based on LEDs. Despite the wide variety of models, they all worked on the same principle and gave identical accuracy, which was exceeded only in the 80s of the XX century.
This is the first automatic guitar tuner invented by Canadian J.D. Steven Richard in 1982 at the University of New Brunswick. This tuner worked on a different principle: it used phase-locked loop feedback technology. She "listened" to the frequency of the vibrating string and rotated the shaft of the stepper motor with a gear ratio of 400/1, which ensured much higher accuracy and compactness of the device. Unlike the bulky Stroboconn, it was attached to the guitar's tuning pin.
The clip-on tuners, invented in the 1990s, have become even more compact. The authorship of the first such device belongs to Mark Wilson from the American corporation OnBoard Research Corporation. Her first clip-on tuner in 1995 was called the Intellitouch Tuner Model PT1 and could be attached to the neck of the guitar. At the same time, he was immune to background noise, which allowed him to tune the guitar in a noisy environment, during rehearsals and tuning other musical instruments.
Interesting facts
Speaking of interesting facts related to guitar tuners, we can list the following:
- The stroboscopic tuners familiar to many old-school musicians today seem too bulky and inconvenient. In this regard, Peterson Tuners launched a line of non-mechanical electronic tuners in 2001 with dot-matrix strobe displays.
- In 2004, the same company, Peterson Tuners, introduced the public to the public with a floor standing strompbox model for live performances on stage. The device has the same accuracy as disk stroboscopic tuners, but displays information on the display.
- In 2008, Gibson released a new model of the Robot Guitar (custom version of the Les Paul) equipped with a tip that picks up the vibrational frequency of the strings. Using the side knob, you can adjust the intonation of the instrument, and the built-in motorized machines on the headstock adjust it yourself if necessary.
With the development of technology, guitar tuning has ceased to be a purely professional occupation, and today even a beginner can handle it. To do this, it is enough to use an electronic tuner: compact, accurate and easy to operate. It is compatible with classical, acoustic and electric guitars, mounted on the fretboard and displays data on the built-in LCD screen, or on the screen of a connected smartphone.