Audio Gadgets: Chromatic Headstock Tuner

I’ve always been jealous of musicians who make tuning a guitar look easy. I’ve been relying on my Boss TU12 Chromatic Tuner for 26 years now, and I’m still really happy with it. It still works well, though is a little bulky, and from time to time its battery runs out at exactly the wrong time.

I’ve just discovered the Planet Waves’ Chromatic Headstock Tuner on the Coolest Gadgets site. It looks like the next best thing to those guitars that come with a built-in tuner, and at around USD$30, it’s definitely affordable.

Always having the tuner right where I need it really appeals to me, and the big green light that is displayed when the string is in tune looks easy to see even on a dim stage. And the tuner picks up vibration from the guitar itself, meaning that I don’t have to plug it to tune my guitar in loud environments.

Here is a demonstration of how it works:

I might have to get myself one of those!

What about the rest of you guitar players out there? Do you have a favorite tuner, or do you manage to tune your guitar well without one? How often does your guitar go out of tune? And what do you think of the Chromatic Headstock Tuner?

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Comments

Adrian

Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and the AudioJungle blog. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @audiotuts.

Hans Vargas says:

September 17, 2009 at 5:58 am

Cool!
Mihai Sorohan says:

September 21, 2009 at 3:51 am

It’s cool, not bad looking, still, I really prefer much more a pedal tuner that stops the sound while tuning.
This is useful for two situations, first, the audience don’t need to know what and when are you tuning, second, you can mute your instrument whenever you want (to tune, to change cables, even to change instrument…).
Some things don’t need improvement sometimes…