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Double Bass Electronic Tuners

#81
The description of the bass tuning says it is for bass guitar when playing with a piano. Not sure what that means. I know pianos use stretch tuning, but beyond that I am not so sure.

On a fretless instrument like acoustic bass, you adjust the intonation on the fly with all notes except open strings, so I am not sure how useful that mode is for a double bass. I don't use the bass sweetened tuning mode.
 
#83
drurb said:
I left the StroboClip on while I played a chromatic scale and, according to it, I never hit any note in tune. It was correct, of course, but when I watched the CA-30 at the same time I realized that, in some cases, the error was very small-- too small for any reasonable person to care about.
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You can drive yourself nuts trying to get it PERFECT. I find that a stopped note will show varying degrees of "in-tune-ness" by just slightly rolling your finger sideways, not even lifting and repositioning the finger.

I quickly came to judge a slightly rolling display to be "good enough". The Stroboclip is more accurate than my ears can discern, by a long shot.
 
#84
michaeln said:
You can drive yourself nuts trying to get it PERFECT. I find that a stopped note will show varying degrees of "in-tune-ness" by just slightly rolling your finger sideways, not even lifting and repositioning the finger.

I quickly came to judge a slightly rolling display to be "good enough". The Stroboclip is more accurate than my ears can discern, by a long shot.
Click to expand...

I agree completely. That's why I mentioned the part about discovering the error to be too small to care about. Of course, most of us do roll our fingers up and down slightly to adjust intonation in the normal course of playing. The Peterson does allow one to visually discern deviations that, from an auditory point of view, are essentially meaningless. A bit of experience with the StroboClip, especially in concert with another tuner, allows one to gauge how much "rolling" of the display is meaningful. It's a fine device-- again, thanks for your posts about it.
 
#85
I have tried many tuners over the years, from $5 cheapies to the expensive strobes, hand held, rack mount, free standing, etc. The one I keep coming back to for ease of use, accuracy and stability is the inexpensive Korg CA30 pictured above. They're cheap enough and small enough to have one with each instrument so you don't have to fuss about it, just get on with it.
 
#86
michaeln said:
There are reasons the Peterson is more expensive.

First, they have a decades long reputation for making the most accurate tuners in the world (Strobe tuners). Something goes wrong, Peterson will be around to help you, and they are used to dealing with pros. Peterson strobe tuners are used in all of the major big bucks recording studios.

Second, the Stroboclip is accurate to within 1/10 of a cent. Many of the others mentioned here don't even mention accuracy in their specs (such as the Zoid).

Third, the Stroboclip's construction is far superior, with a brushed aluminum body instead of plastic.

The Stroboclip's display is a backlit LCD, which means it is very easy to read in bright, direct sunlight and on a darkened stage.

But if price is the only important thing, the Peterson is probably not what you want.
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the turbo tuner is far more accurate than the than the peterson strobo tuners the turbo tuner is .02 of a percent accurate compared with .1 and and petersons only truly an artificial strobe tuner. The ST-122 has a mic build in to pick up acoustic instruments and their customer services has been stellar if i ever had a question. i would not rule out the turbo tuner and they are less expensive then petersens along with being more accurate.
 
#87
I tried a Sabine Zoid and was very disappointed. It does reasonably well on the G and D strings, has more trouble with the A, and is completely hopeless on the low E. It hears it as a B, a G#, an F#, a C#, or a D, but almost never for what it is, an E. Tried clipping the tuner in various locations on the bridge and pegbox, all to no avail.

Now, admittedly, my Shen is fairly bright with strong overtones, but that's what a tuner is supposed to be able to do, pick out the fundamental from a rich signal. It doesn't do any better tuning to octave harmonics. Also, you have to bow *very* loudly on the low E to get it to pick up any signal at all.

Needless to say, it's going back.
 
#88
Berger912 said:
the turbo tuner is far more accurate than the than the peterson strobo tuners the turbo tuner is .02 of a percent accurate compared with .1 and and petersons only truly an artificial strobe tuner. The ST-122 has a mic build in to pick up acoustic instruments and their customer services has been stellar if i ever had a question. i would not rule out the turbo tuner and they are less expensive then petersens along with being more accurate.
Click to expand...
The Peterson StroboClip is $60 less than the Turbo Tuner.
The Turbo Tuner is $60 less than the Peterson StroboStomp II or Stomp Classic.

Having used both side by side (I own three Petersons (well, I just traded one away, so two now) and a Turbo Tuner, the difference in accuracy is so slight as to be undetectable in actual practice. I find the Peterson display to be slightly easier to read (it takes some getting used to at first).

My dad has a tuner accurate to .01 cents (twice the Turbo Tuner). I can't use it on basses or guitars. Neither can he, but it is great on pianos.

If you need a pedal tuner, I liked the Turbo Tuner more than the Peterson StroboStomp. I have not compared it to the StroboStomp II or new Stomp Classic.

For general use, the little StroboClip is tough to beat.

The Peterson and Turbo Tuner are both great tuners.

I keep a Peterson StroboFlip in my work area for intonating guitars, which also happens to be the room I practice in. It gets used a lot, very convenient having a 1/4" in and a microphone. The StroboClip goes with me to lessons or when I'm in the Rice guitar shop. The StroboStomp just got traded away, I don't need it anymore. I may keep the Turbo Tuner as it's a great pedal tuner, but I don't need one right now. That can always change in the future!
 
#89
iiipopes said:
I have tried many tuners over the years, from $5 cheapies to the expensive strobes, hand held, rack mount, free standing, etc. The one I keep coming back to for ease of use, accuracy and stability is the inexpensive Korg CA30 pictured above. They're cheap enough and small enough to have one with each instrument so you don't have to fuss about it, just get on with it.
Click to expand...

I use the GA-30 a lot, too. That's the guitar/bass version. The advantage over the chromatic model is that it only looks for the notes that I'm after...no chance of accidentally tuning to a flat or sharp by accident. In other words, if I play a note and green light comes on, I'm set.
 
#91
iiipopes said:
...The one I keep coming back to ...is the inexpensive Korg CA30 pictured above. They're cheap enough and small enough to have one with each instrument so you don't have to fuss about it, just get on with it.
Click to expand...

Agree about the CA30 but "get on with it?" Are we boring you? :) Obviously, I have a CA30 but the necessity to plug in my pickup under real-world gigging situations led me to want a clip-on.

Berger912 said:
the turbo tuner is far more accurate than the than the peterson strobo tuners the turbo tuner is .02 of a percent accurate compared with .1 and and petersons only truly an artificial strobe tuner. The ST-122 has a mic build in to pick up acoustic instruments and their customer services has been stellar if i ever had a question. i would not rule out the turbo tuner and they are less expensive then petersens along with being more accurate.
Click to expand...

The Turbo Tuner ST-122 is not a clip-on, and is $129.99. It's not less expensive at all. It's almost twice the price of a StroboClip. If you delve into how it works, then you'll find that it offers no more of a "real" stroboscopic display than does the Peterson. Both electronically derive a "moving" display from an error signal within the device. The Turbo Tuner certainly does claim impressive accuracy. Let's take a look at what this means:

A440
StroboClip error: +/- 0.0254 Hz
ST-122 error: +/- 0.00050 Hz

Both are below the capability of any human to resolve. Let's say that you're worried about matching the beat frequencies across two strings. We'll take an extreme example for the double bass by letting the fundamental, or first harmonic, be the octave above the open G. That's 196 Hz. The error on the StroboClip will be 0.0113 Hz. The fourth harmonic of that stopped (or harmonic) G is 784 Hz and it's error against the same overtone of string tuned perfectly would be 0.0452 Hz. That is, the fourth harmonic would "beat" against another perfectly tuned string at about 5/100 of a cycle! With the ST-122, the beat rate would be 0.0090 Hz or 9/1000 of a cycle.

So, for the double bass this is really all pretty silly. It's silly for other instruments as well when you consider that no acoustic instrument is even going to hold tuning within these limits and that the variance produced by the tuning adjusters on such instruments being adjusted by human hands swamps the accuracy of either of these tuners.

So, if you want a super-precise, super-accurate clip-on tuner, IMO, the StroboClip is the way to go. Especially for double-bass players (this IS a DB forum, after all), I see absolutely no practical reason to get the ST-122. For that matter, if you're willing to use a microphone-based tuner with the only other input option being a jack, then there are several options costing far less than the ST-122 that would provide more than adequate accuracy for the real world.
 
#92
i wasnt comparing the price of the turbo tuner to the clip on i was comparing it to the flip model the turbo tuner is $70 dollars less the the flip and more accurate both true statements. where you need that much accuratecy is up to you i for one also think that extremely bright LED's are much easier to see than the flips display.
 
#94
Berger912 said:
i wasnt comparing the price of the turbo tuner to the clip on i was comparing it to the flip model the turbo tuner is $70 dollars less the the flip and more accurate both true statements. where you need that much accuratecy is up to you i for one also think that extremely bright LED's are much easier to see than the flips display.
Click to expand...

The disconnect is that you didn't say you were comparing it to the Peterson StroboFlip. This, in the context of the discussion here that was about the StroboClip. If anyone is considering the StroboFlip, then indeed he/she would do well to look into the Turbo Tuner. As far as I can tell, the StroboFlip has features that the Turbo Tuner does not (e.g., clip-on pickup, sweetened tunings, mounting clamp). Given that the accuracy of even the Peterson seems greater than anyone could practically want and/or use, whether its features are worth the the additional cost would depend on what the user desires.
 
#95
I like this one
http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/product/Intellitouch-PT10-Mini-ClipOn-Tuner?sku=502816

Some tuners don't respond quick enough for the bass (my opinion), this is a quick response, it also doesn't shut itself off for those days when you just can't seem to play in Bb correctly (maybe just me?)

It's got a good clamp, which I think makes it better than some other clip on tuners I've tried. It's not perfect, sometimes reads the 5th above, but it's cheap. I have it on the bridge, E string side above the adjusters.
 
#97
I have been following this thread, wondering if I should invest in a clip-on tuner. Although I own a cheap Korg unit, I'm prone to leave it at home, in a slab bag or whatever so it seldom gets used. On a gig, I normally just check the bass to be sure it's close and adjust by ear after a tune or two. Open strings help to tune on the fly.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that intonation changes after instruments adjust to temperature. My Olive G can be off a half step after a few tunes but will stay in tune after that. We can tune all we want, but if the sax player just showed up with a cold horn it ain't gonna be tuned to 440 anyway.

I'll stick with using my ears for now.
 
#98
iiipopes said:
Sorry, I meant get on with the gig. The CA30 has a built in microphone as well.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay, I thought you were annoyed with the progression of the discussion. Sorry. Indeed, I know that the CA30 has a built-in mic as that's the tuner I've had and used for years. At a gig or rehearsal, given the noise in the room and other musicians, I virtually always need to plug the pup into the CA30 in order to tune.

clink said:
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that intonation changes after instruments adjust to temperature. My Olive G can be off a half step after a few tunes but will stay in tune after that. We can tune all we want, but if the sax player just showed up with a cold horn it ain't gonna be tuned to 440 anyway.

I'll stick with using my ears for now.
Click to expand...

You're right. I alluded to that when I mentioned acoustic instruments not holding precise intonation. Most of the time, I'm in situations where everyone tunes up at the beginning. It's at least a reliable place to start but after that, sure, you gotta adjust.
 
#100
Dear Moderators:

1. Could this thread be made a sticky?

2. Could you also find a way - perhaps in the FAQ - to say it's OK to talk about electronic tuners on this forum?

Of course, if anyone reading disagrees with either of these suggestions, speak now, please.

-S-
 

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