If the error in your tuner happens to coincide with the guitar's own deviation on any one note, you are certainly going to hear it.

Significantly more accurate in fact a typical pedal-type or hand-held guitar tuner will achieve something around a ☒ cents (hundredths of a semitone) accuracy, whereas a strobe (even a 'virtual strobe') will achieve a tenth of a cent, equivalent to one thousandth of a semitone.ĭoes anybody need to be that in-tune? Well it certainly helps, especially when you consider that all guitars are inherently slightly out of tune by a few cents on some chords at some positions. The reason that serious users maintain that nothing else will do, however, is that strobe tuners are more accurate.

The downside is that, being high-precision electromechanical devices, true strobes, such as the renowned Peterson and Conn models of the '70s and beyond, are bulkier and far more expensive than the typical electronic tuner used by almost every guitar player today. Real strobe tuners use optical techniques with rotating discs to generate their unique pattern of moving bars, which approach and then achieve stillness when tuning is achieved. The few compromises are vastly outweighed by the obvious benefits, particularly for the studio user. Strobe performance at a significantly lower cost than the real thing. Will accurately tune a bass open-string low 'B'!.Audio passes at unity gain and without noticeable degradation, but I'd still recommend the avoidance of anything unnecessary between instrument and destination wherever possible, preferring to feed the tuner from an amp line out, in a live situation, or a spare mixer output in the studio. Power comes from three AA 1.5V batteries or any external 3V DC external power supply - in view of the VS1's hearty appetite for batteries, however, I'm inclined to think that a PSU should be an included accessory (as I believe it is in Peterson's native USA), particularly for use in the studio where it might be left permanently on.Īudio connection is via a quarter-inch jack on the right-hand edge of the casing, with an adjacent link Thru. Looking somewhat like a digital multimeter, with an LCD screen in the top half of the casing and a menu-driven control interface below, the VS1 is anything but intimidating in use. The VS1 Virtual Strobe Tuner from Peterson seeks to offer most of the benefits of expensive mechanical strobe tuners, typically used by piano tuners and all good guitar techs, in a more affordable, portable package. Too expensive? Too bulky? Not when it's this palm-sized 'virtual' strobe.

When 'close enough' is just not good enough, you need a strobe tuner.

Peterson strobe tuner for piano