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Old 01-17-2014, 08:48 AM
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Originally Posted by philjs View Post
In another thread discussing tuners that people use there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about what accuracy is, and the importance of the distinction between accuracy and precision. I thought this was important so am posting this as a new thread...this image should help:



A tuner should be both accurate AND precise. To my mind, there are very few tuners that are both...and those that are are strobe tuners.

Phil
Hi philjs...

I'd say strobe tuners are like Gold Medal Winners at the Olympics. Their performance is to be admired, but they have a hard time developing a normal life.

I own 4 strobe tuners, which are rather useless in an ensemble or on even a medium loud stage where one is anywhere near the drummer or bassist. As soon as either hits a note, the guitar picks up their notes and those appear on my tuner screen.

For intonating guitars, strobes are perfect. Also for the solitude of my living room or teaching area. Great in the studio too.

The little charts you present are good, and if you expand the bullseye on the "Both Accurate and Precise" to +-3 cents (3/100 of a ˝ step) you allow all the modern electronic tuners. Simpler Electronic tuners are both accurate and precise, but they are calibrated to +-2/100 or +-3/100 of a half step - not +- 1/1000 half step. And if you draw a Bullseye Targed and then draw a center circle which is only 3% of the circle, it will be hard to see (a target with 5 stripes and a circle has the center circle at about 15%) Your little targets have a center which is 33⅓%. +-3cents begins to look more accurate.

I suspect the extreme accuracy and precision of strobes is why Peterson added sweetened tuning capability to it's strobe guitar tuners. They are so accurate that you tune more accurately than you ever have, only to discover your guitar still plays out of tune.

Imagine that, most accurate tuner in the world now assisting us to be less accurate in a precise fashion. Well, when the instrument is built to be not-that-precise, the tuner probably has to adjust as well.

Another factor you did not seem to account for is the quick/slow responsiveness of various tuners.

Some are deliberately slow to pick up on the attack. The initial pluck of a string causes the note to be sharp and then it settles to pitch. This tends to 'unsettle' those who doing the tuning. They don't want to watch strings settle, they want to tune the guitar. Slow in this case doesn't mean faulty, or dull. Sensible…

But with a tuner which is too slow on the initial response, players think it's not working right. Old sweep needle Boss digitals were built that way (first generation).

They quickly countered the slow response by adding a physical needle (first ones just had red arrows with a green middle dot), and it was fun to watch the needle sweep up to pitch. Then when it arrived - it was rock stable since it was desensitized and not prone to jittering.

I personally like a quick response to strings (as with the Snarks) which allows me to cheat and sweeten tunings visually. I just play notes a bit softer and watch for the tendency of the sharpness to decide how sharp, flat, or spot on I want to be.

Interesting discussion....


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Last edited by ljguitar; 01-17-2014 at 08:57 AM. Reason: cleaned up some bad speeling & stuff...
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