Getting the most of your tuner
Too many guitarists cuss their Tuner.
Maybe they are ignoring the basics of how a Tuner works.
The idea is to give the tuner a nice strong signal of the fundamental while trying to reject all other signals.
Here are some tips to get the best out of your electronic tuner -
A) Max the Volume control, we need a nice strong signal
Set the tone control for a bassy sound. This will cut out harmonics and give the tuner a signal that is closer to a Sine wave
C) Use the neck pickup. There are more harmonics on the bridge pickup that will tend to confuse some tuners
D) Use your thumb to gently pluck a string once. This will generate less harmonics than a pick
E) Pluck near the middle of a string. This will generate less harmonics that struming elsewhere
F) Damp the other strings. They tend to vibrate sympathetically and that can confuse many tuners.
G) Give the tuner time. Some tuners need a second or so to latch on to the correct frequency
and now a radical thought that might get me flamed............
H) Dont be too obsessed in getting that green LED on and always try to be in \"exact tune\".
i) If you just hold your guitar a bit differently, you will find you are a bit out of exact tune anyway !!!. You can easily see this on a sensitive tuner.
ii) If you are exactly in tune on an open string, it means that most probably you are also in tune on the 12th fret unless you hold the string too loose or too tight
but you are surely a bit out of tune on all other frets !!! Such is the nature of the guitar !!!!
Maybe they are ignoring the basics of how a Tuner works.
The idea is to give the tuner a nice strong signal of the fundamental while trying to reject all other signals.
Here are some tips to get the best out of your electronic tuner -
A) Max the Volume control, we need a nice strong signal
Set the tone control for a bassy sound. This will cut out harmonics and give the tuner a signal that is closer to a Sine waveC) Use the neck pickup. There are more harmonics on the bridge pickup that will tend to confuse some tuners
D) Use your thumb to gently pluck a string once. This will generate less harmonics than a pick
E) Pluck near the middle of a string. This will generate less harmonics that struming elsewhere
F) Damp the other strings. They tend to vibrate sympathetically and that can confuse many tuners.
G) Give the tuner time. Some tuners need a second or so to latch on to the correct frequency
and now a radical thought that might get me flamed............
H) Dont be too obsessed in getting that green LED on and always try to be in \"exact tune\".
i) If you just hold your guitar a bit differently, you will find you are a bit out of exact tune anyway !!!. You can easily see this on a sensitive tuner.
ii) If you are exactly in tune on an open string, it means that most probably you are also in tune on the 12th fret unless you hold the string too loose or too tight
but you are surely a bit out of tune on all other frets !!! Such is the nature of the guitar !!!!
Comments
1. Let it ring, like you stated.
2. Tune to the picked note. This means continually picking lightly while tuning.
I have found the later works better most of the time.
EVH Tuning Methodology 101