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Guitar tuners come in just about every shape and size. While you can pay hundreds of dollars for a top-of-the-line strobe tuner, you can get a world-class tuner for under $100 that will suit almost any stage or practice application—I've tried pretty much every tuner under the sun, and I have found that the performance of the good inexpensive tuners is every bit as good as the expensive ones (strobe tuners excepted). So those are the ones we sell.

Ever since the introduction of inexpensive electronic guitar tuners 30+ years ago, the tuner market has settled into three main segments: pocket tuners, clip-on tuners, and pedal tuners. You can also buy big, expensive rack-mounted tuners, but for most players, one of the three portable types of tuner does the trick.

What I'm calling Pocket Tuners are all those tuners that are about the size of a wallet or smaller. They have an LCD or LED lights to indicate tuning status, most have a microphone built in, and they all take a 1/4" input from a guitar cable, which is important if you're trying to tune on a loud stage. They're all small enough to fit in your pocket, guitar case or gigbag. After 30 years onstage with a guitar, I still find that these tuners are my go-to tuners. They're portable, reliable, and durable. I'm a big fan of the basic Korg CA40, but pretty much all of the sub-$30 tuners in this category are excellent. They're also inexpensive enough that you can put one in each guitar case.

Another popular variety of guitar tuner is the Pedal Tuner. These are typically in-line (1/4" in, 1/4" out), with a mute that's engaged when you step on the pedal. These tend to be bulkier, heavier, and more expensive than pocket tuners, but it's hard to argue with the convenience of an in-line, mutable tuner when you need to tune in between songs. This market was originally dominated by the excellent Boss TU-2—since replaced by the new TU-3—but it has lately been populated by many excellent tuners. Both Planet Waves and Korg have solid offerings in this category, with the Tru-Strobe and the PitchBlack notable as our best-sellers.

The most recent development in portable guitar tuners is the Clip-On Tuner. These tuners operate by clipping onto your headstock or some other part of your instrument, and sensing the vibration of the instrument to determine its pitch. This is different from pocket tuners and pedal tuners, which typically get the pitch information audibly from a mic, or from the pickup in your guitar. Because clip-on tuners sense any vibration, they can be used to tune virtually any instrument. This versatility, combined with their small size, made them instantly popular a few years back. The clip-on market was dominated early on by Intellitouch, whose tuners we still carry. They were excellent tuners, but all electronic tuners are idiosyncratic, and the early generation of clip-ons seemed to be more idiosyncratic than most. In particular, they were very sensitive to sympathetic harmonics generated by the plucking of the lower strings, making it hard to nail down which pitch was actually being tuned. This is addressed very easily by tuning with the 12th-fret or 7th-fret harmonic, but, still, it was less than desirable.

The newer generation of clip-ons seems to grab notes much more reliably, and so they're seeing quite a resurgence in popularity. Many of the clip-ons on the market right now are made by a single Korean manufacturer. The tuners out of this factory get branded in the US with a plethora of names—Intelli, TuneTech, Barcus Berry, Meisel, and many more. They're all the same tuner, so you're in good shape no matter which of the brands you choose.**

Clip-On Tuners	Description	Price*
TuneTech TT-500	Clip-on chromatic tuner	$24.00
TuneTech TT-1000	Clip-on chromatic tuner	$24.00
Intellitouch PT-10	Clip-on chromatic tuner. Entire screen changes green or red to indicate sharp or flat.	$27.00
Planet Waves CT-10	Clip-on chromatic tuner. Note indicator changes green or red to indicate sharp or flat.	$25.00
Barcus Berry Soulmate	Clip-on chromatic tuner.	$24.00
Pedal Tuners	Description	Price*
Boss TU-3	The industry standard.	$99.00
Korg Pitchblack	True bypass pedal tuner	$99.00
Planet Waves Tru-Strobe Pedal Tuner	Solid, durable pedal tuner. Fantastic price for a strobe tuner	$75.00
Planet Waves Tru-Srobe Tuner	Not quite a pedal tuner (it includes a mic), but built as ruggedly as the pedal version above.	$75.00
Planet Waves PW-CT-04	PW's basic chromatic pedal tuner. Like the other PW tuners above, it's built like a tank.	$75.00
Pocket Tuners	Description	Price*
Korg GA-1	Guitar and bass tuner, includes jack and pitch pipe. Tunes EADGBE. (replaces the GA-30)	$14.00
Korg CA-1	Chromatic pocket tuner, includes jack and pitch pipe. (replaces the CA-30)	$15.00
Korg GA-40	Like the GA1, but with more octaves covered.	$19.00
Korg CA-40	Like the CA-1, but with more octaves covered.	$22.00
Metronomes	Description	Price*
MA-30	Full-featured portable metronome.	$23.00
TM-40	Metronome / Tuner combo	$27.00
Tuner Accessories	Description	Price*
Korg CM-100-L	Clip-on tuning mic. Plugs into any 1/4" input.	$15.00

*All tuner prices include free shipping anywhere in the US or Canada. Colorado residents add 2.9% sales tax. Please see our Shipping page for additional shipping information.

**One note when purchasing one of the Barcus Berry or TuneTech tuners: Every one comes with a thin protective vinyl covering on the face. However, the covering is so thin that many folks think that it's a dull, scuffed-up face on the tuner. I promise you that there is indeed a thin covering there, so if you think your tuner is damaged, just pick at the tuner and peel that off.

Korg Tuners