PolyTune 3 regular vs Mini/Noir

[Kuskah]

Decided to grab a pedal tuner, as my clip-on seems to struggle with the low notes on a 5-string. The PolyTune line seems to be a top contender, unless I wanted to spend a disproportionate amount of cash on a tuner pedal (*cough*StroboStomp*cough*).

After some quick research, the main differences seem to be power daisy-chaining, which I don't really need, 9V battery compartment, which is nice but not a deal breaker if the pedal doesn't have it and... "bass mode". It is rarely mentioned in specs and I have no idea what it does, but if it enables the regular version to realize I'm playing low B quicker than the Mini or Noir, I might buy it just for that feature alone.

Note: I only care about chromatic and strobe tuning, have zero interest in the polyphonic thing, even if it worked on bass (which it may or may not, no idea).

As far as pricing goes, they seem to be priced pretty much the same, so I wouldn't save any money going either direction.

 

[crguti]

if both has the same features, then consider if it is important the size.

 

[mouthmw]

I had both.

Regular Polytune 3 had a half a second lag in buffered mode when switching it on. Meaning, if you hit the tuner switch and hit the note immediately, the audio would still pass for like half a second. I hated that for live use when I wanted to mute my signal and not make noise, ya know. It was instantaneous in true bypass mode though, for some reason. My particular unit also had a bit wonky power inputs - all of my power cables (EBS, Truetone, Rockboard, etc) were a bit loose when plugged in. Might have been just my unit though, but still, not the best QC IMO.

Polytune 3 Noir had instant switching in either modes, and the build quality was perfectly fine, nothing wonky. I used it for like 3 years, no issues. Both tuners were equally fine at tuning and grabbing notes.

Oh, poly tuning, to me, was completely useless. Both tuners were equally good/fast at normal chromatic tuning.

In conclusion, I liked the Polytune 3 Noir, it's a nice mini tuner. Regular Polytune 3 was meh and I much preffered my Boss TU-3W.

My favorite tuner however is Sonic Research ST-300. For the mini version, there's ST-300 Mini.

 

[Smurf-o-Deth]

The Peterson Strobostomp Mini is worth considering here, too. It’s not much more expensive than the Polytunes.

 

[mmbongo]

Go Noir if you don’t need the battery option. I’ve used them for years, no issues.

 

[Hypocrite]

I've never had much luck with the Polytunes. Extremely slow tracking, extremely imprecise on anything below E standard, and the automatic switching to poly mode was just too obnoxious. I dumped that POS for a Korg Pitchblack, something I should have done a long time ago.

 

[zombywoof5050]

My favorite tuner however is Sonic Research ST-300. For the mini version, there's ST-300 Mini.

The ST-300 is also my favorite tuner, but I just wanted to note (for anyone interested) that the ST-300 Mini does not have an 'always on' mode (the full size ST-300 does).

 

[javi_bassist]

I have both. I only got the Polytune 3 because the size of the noir. I don't really like small pedals. However, I think it's a bit better. Just a little bit faster than the regular one. Both work perfectly, but if I had to choose, I'd go with the noir.