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5 string clip on tuner

vxjoe

Guest
Sep 22, 2013
66
5
Not sure what section this belongs in, here goes.

Looking for a clip on tuner for 5 string bass. Tried a few and they are slow, short battery life, the coin style batteries die quick. I tried the Korg and D'Addario, these are mini-tuners. Both have trouble tuning the low B. Before I buy another I thought the brain trust should weigh in. Are the larger round Snark tuners any better? Or should I stick with my rack, floor, and hand held tuners?
 
Yes, the Snarks seem to work a little better. I own both of the other two and sometimes I have to play the B string as a harmonic to get a solid lock. The Snark seems to find lock a little better but isn't perfect.

Having something that reads the signal rather than vibrations off the head stock will be more reliable. Joyo makes a Pitchblack clone that's cheap. I use a Pitchblack on my bass pedal board but am getting the joyo for my guitar pedalboard.
 
My experience has been the same: the Snark works a bit better than the D'addario (NS) mini, but popping the 12th fret harmonic takes care of the B string on both.

After some time with both of those headstock tuners, I just went back to putting a pedal on top of my amp and feeding it signal from the tuner out. For me there isn't any advantage to the clip-on and the pedal is quick to grab the pitch and easy to read.
 
Strange,
I don't play 5 strings bass, but my colleague does, he has the same Korg PC-1 as me (even use mine sometime). It's may not the best tuner available in the market, but I never see he has any problem with that.
 
After some time with both of those headstock tuners, I just went back to putting a pedal on top of my amp and feeding it signal from the tuner out. For me there isn't any advantage to the clip-on and the pedal is quick to grab the pitch and easy to read.

contrary, I never use my old tuners (t.c. electronic, Boss TU etc)..anymore. It's wasting time for me. Although maybe, just maybe, they tuned better than this my smallies cheap tuner. Never a problem for me tho. Live, it's OK (better than my ears), Recording, I always can fine tune with Pro Tools plug-in or alike.